He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do!
He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile
of rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big,
fat, grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson
of the one Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.

I called him `Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear
to be insulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable;
he's usually pretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact;
and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the
right way and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor.
I mean it figuratively.)

We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing?
Listen to this: `Last night I was seized by a fit of despair
that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw
the dining-room clock into the sea.'

It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing
to have about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.

Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.
Yours ever,
Judy




20th Jan.