sit out, and the little garden grows every minute more enchanted.  Frau Bornsted rests after her labours, with her hands in her lap, and agrees with what the Oberforster every now and then takes his pipe out of his mouth to say, and I lie back in my chair and stare at the stars, and I think and think, and wonder and wonder.  And what do you suppose I think and wonder about, little mother?  You and love.  I don’t know why I say you and love, for it’s the same thing.  And so is all this beauty of summer in the woods, and so is music, and my violin when it gets playing to me; and the future is full of it, and oh, I do so badly want to say thank you to some one!

Good night my most precious mother.

  Your Chris.

  Schuppenfelde, Friday, July 17,1914.

This morning when I came down to breakfast, sweet mother, there at the foot of the stairs was Herr von Inster.  He didn’t say anything, but watched me coming down with the contented look he has I like so much.  I was frightfully pleased to see him, and smiled all over myself.  “Oh,” I exclaimed, “so you’ve come.”

He held out his hand and helped me down the last steps.  He was in green shooting clothes, like the Oberforster’s, but without the official buttons, and looked very nice.  You’d like him, I’m sure.  You’d like what he looks like, and like what he is.

He had been in the forest since four this morning, shooting with his colonel, who came down with him to Koseritz last night.  The colonel and Graf Koseritz, who came down from Berlin with them, were both breakfasting, attended by the Bornsteds, and it shows how soundly I sleep here that I hadn’t heard anything.

“And aren’t you having any breakfast?” I asked.

“I will now,” he said.  “I was listening for your door to open,”

I think you’d like him very much, little mother.

The colonel, whose name is Graf Hohenfeld, was being very pleasant to Frau Bornsted, watching her admiringly as she brought him things to eat.  He was very pleasant to me too, and got up and put his heels together and said, “Old England for ever” when I appeared, and asked the Graf whether Frau Bornsted and I didn’t remind him of a nosegay of flowers.  Obviously we didn’t.  The Graf doesn’t look as if anybody ever reminded him of anything.  He greeted me briefly, and then sat staring abstractedly at the tablecloth, as he did in Berlin.  The Colonel did all the talking.  Both he and the Graf had on those pretty green shooting things they wear in Germany, with the becoming soft hats and little feathers.  He was very jovial indeed, seemed fond and proud of his lieutenant, Herr von Inster, slapped the Oberforster every now and then on the back, which made him nearly faint with joy each time, and wished it weren’t breakfast and only coffee, because he would have liked to drink our healths,—­“The healths of these two delightful young roses,” he said, bowing to Frau Bornsted and me, “the Rose of England—­long live England, which produces such flowers—­and the Rose of Germany, our own wild forest rose.”