CHAPTER VII
DECLARATION OF HAPPINESS
I
EXTRACTS from letters that Bobby Galleon wrote to Alice Galleon about this time:
“. . . But, of course, I am sorrier than I can say that it's so dull. That's due to charity, my dear, and if you will go and fling yourself into the depths of Yorkshire because a girl like Ola Hunting chooses to think she's unhappy and lonely you've only yourself to thank. Moreover there's your husband to be considered. I don't suppose, for a single instant, that he really prefers to be left alone, with his infant son, mind you, howling at the present moment because his nurse won't let him swallow the glass marbles, and you can picture to yourself—if you want to make yourself thoroughly unhappy—your Robert sitting, melancholy throughout the long evening, alone, desolate, creeping to bed somewhere about ten o'clock.
“So there we are—you're bored to death and I've no one to growl at when I come back from the City—all Ola Hunting's fault—wring the girl's neck. Meanwhile here I sit and every evening I'll write whatever comes into my head and never look back on it again but stick it into an envelope and send it to you. You know me too well by now to be disappointed at anything.
“I'm quite sure that, if you were here with me now, sitting in that chair opposite me and sewing for all you were worth, that the thing that we'd be talking about would be Peter. If, therefore, these scrawls are full of Peter you won't mind, I know. He's immensely occupying my attention just now and you love him as truly and deeply as I do, so that if I go on at length about him you'll excuse it on that score. You who know me better than any one else in the world know that, in my most secret heart, I flatter myself on my ability as a psvchologist. I remember when
