Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/95



''weeks. I shall have to cross from Belfast to Liverpool, I think, and try to get my sleeping done on the boat. And that means that I shall not be home till Tuesday. Can't be helped.''

On 31. 8. 19 Teixeira wrote to greet me on my return from Ireland:

''After your preliminary wanderings, my dear Stephen O'Dysseus, welcome home again! You were always the worst courier in the world; I've not ever known you to bring one of your young and very lovely charges to her destination without encountering cataclysmal adventures on the road Still, would that I had known that you can buy collars, clean and therefore presumably new collars, at Drogheda for fourpence apiece. Yesterday I paid fifteen shillings for a dozen''

On 21. 12. 19 he writes to offer me good wishes for Christmas:

''The one and only thing that the Fortunate Youth appeared to me not to possess will reach you in a little registered packet to-morrow evening You are to accept it as a token of the happiness which I wish you during this Christmas and the whole of the coming year.''