But I expect he is right, and it is time I went where it is cooler for a little while.  I’ve been getting steadily angrier at nothing all the week, and more and more fretted by the flies, and one day—­would you believe it—­I actually sat down and cried with irritation because of those silly flies.  I’ve had to promise not to touch a fiddle for the first week I’m away, and during the second week not to work more than two hours a day, and then I may come back if I feel quite well again.  He says he’ll be at Heringsdorf, which is a seaside place not very far away from where I shall be, for ten days himself, and will come over and see if I’m being good.  He says the Koseritz’s country place isn’t far from where I shall be, so I shan’t feel as if I didn’t know a soul anywhere.  The Koseritz party at which I was to play never came off.  I was glad of that.  I didn’t a bit want to play at it, or bother about it, or anything else.  The hot weather drove the Grafin into the country, Herr von Inster told me, He too seems to think I ought to go away.  I saw him this afternoon after being with Kloster, and he says he’ll go down to his aunt’s—­that is Grafin Koseritz—­while I’m in the neighbourhood, and will ride over and see me.  I’m sure you’d like him very much.  My address will be: 

  bei Herrn Oberforster Bornsted
    Schuppenfelde
      Reg.  Bez.  Stettin.

I don’t know what Reg.  Bez. means.  I’ve copied it from a card Kloster gave me, and I expect you had better put it on the envelope.  I’ll write and tell you directly I get there.  Don’t worry about me, little mother; Kloster says they are fearfully kind people, and it’s the healthiest place, in the heart of the forest, away on the edge of a thing they call the Haff, which is water.  He says that in a week I shall be leaping about like a young roe on the hill side; and he tries to lash me to enthusiasm by talking of all the wild strawberries there are there, and all the cream.

  My heart’s love, darling mother. 
    Your confused and rather hustled Chris.

  Oberforsterei, Schuppenfelde, July 11th, 1914.

My own little mother,

Here I am, and it is lovely.  I must just tell you about it before I go to bed.  We’re buried in forest, eight miles from the nearest station, and that’s only a Kleinbahn station, a toy thing into which a small train crawls twice a day, having been getting to it for more than three hours from Stettin.  The Oberforster met me in a high yellow carriage, drawn by two long-tailed horses who hadn’t been worried with much drill judging from their individualistic behaviour, and we lurched over forest tracks that were sometimes deep sand and sometimes all roots, and the evening air was so delicious after the train, so full of different scents and freshness, that I did nothing but lift up my nose and sniff with joy.

The Oberforster thought I had a cold, without at the same time having a handkerchief; and presently, after a period of uneasiness on my behalf, offered me his.  “It is not quite clean,” he said, “but it is better than none.”  And he shouted, because I was a foreigner and therefore would understand better if he shouted.