* * * * *

" ... I began this letter in the morning and now it is bedtime. Robinson
Crusoe is no longer solitary: the island is inhabited. My first visitors
arrived about 11 a.m.--a small boy and a dog--an extremely good-looking
little boy and a well-bred fox-terrier. They sat on the garden wall
until I invited them in, when they ate chocolates and biscuits, and the
boy offered to repeat poetry. I expected 'Casabianca' or the modern
equivalent, but instead I got the song from Hippolytus, 'O take me to
the Mountains, O.' It was rather surprising, but when he invited me to
go with him to his home, which is next door, it was more surprising
still. Instead of finding another small villa like Hillview with a
breakneck stair and poky little rooms, I found a real old cottage. The
room I was taken into was about the nicest I ever saw. I think it would
have fulfilled all your conditions as to the proper furnishing of a
room; indeed, now that I think of it, it was quite a man's room.

"It had a polished floor and some good rugs, and creamy yellow walls
with delicious coloured prints. There were no ornaments except some fine
old brass: solid chairs and a low, wide-seated sofa, and books
everywhere.

"The shape of the room is delightfully unusual. It is long and rather
low-ceilinged, and one end comes almost to a point like the bow of a
ship. There is a window with a window-seat in the bow, and as the house
stands high on a slope and faces west, you look straight across the
river to the hills, and almost have the feeling that you are sailing
into the sunset.

"In this room a girl sat, darning stockings and crying quietly to