Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/182



I look forward, with pleasure, to receiving your diary and soon you may look backward, with disgust, to having received mine.

''My health has made very reasonable progress and my wife is exceedingly well. Frank Dodd visits us for two days on Thursday: how we shall be after that well, how shall we be after that?''

On 27. 3. 21 he writes:

''Dodd arrived on Thursday: I say, he arrived. He arrived by travelling from London to Southhampton in a luggage-van with a first-class ticket (what's the penalty for that?); by running his boat into the mud 10 minutes from Cowes; by missing his connection; by changing at Ryde; and by repeating his offence "thence" and "hither": i. e. travelling with the same ticket in a second luggage-van. At 9 p. m. he arrived, greeting me with the words:''

"I've had nothing to eat since breakfast."

You should have seen the poor fellow torn between two longings, with a plateful of soup before him while waiting for a Ventnor cocktail, consisting of 98% Plymouth gin and 2% orange bitters.

We motored him on Friday to Blackgang, to Chale, to Carisbrooke, to Newport, to Brading,