I’ll meet you at Port Said.  I don’t know how I keep myself sitting in this chair.  I could turn head over heels for joy! (And poor Grumper only just buried and his Will read!) He didn’t lose quite all his grim humour in that wonderful week of softening, relenting and humanizing.  What do you think he solemnly gave and bequeathed to the poor Haddock?  His wardrobe!!!  And nothing else, but if the Haddock wears only Grumper’s clothes, including his boots, shirts, ties, collars and everything else, for one full and complete year, and wears absolutely nothing else, he is to have five thousand pounds at the end of it—­and he is to begin on the day after the funeral!  And even at the last poor Grumper was a foot taller and a foot broader (not to mention thicker) than the Haddock!  It appears that he systematically tried to poison Grumper’s mind against you—­presumably with an eye on this same last Will and Testament.  He hasn’t been seen since the funeral.  I wonder if he is going to try to win the money by remaining in bed for a year in Grumper’s pyjamas!

“Am I not developing ‘self-control and balance’?  Here I sit writing news to you while my heart is screaming aloud with joy, crying ’Dam is coming home.  Dam’s troubles are over.  Dam is saved!’ Because if you are ever so ‘ill,’ Darling, there is nothing on earth to prevent your coming to your old home at once—­and if we can’t marry we can be pals for evermore in the dear old place of our childhood.  But of course we can marry.  Hurry home, and if any Harley Street doctor gives you even a doubtful look, throw him up his own stairs to show how feeble you are, or tie his poker round his neck in a neat bow, and refuse to undo it until he apologizes.  I’m sure you could! ‘Ill’ indeed!  If you can’t have a little fit, on the rare occasions when you see a snake, without fools saying you are ill or dotty or something, it is a pity!  Anyhow there is one small woman who understands, and if she can’t marry you she can at any rate be your inseparable pal—­and if the Piffling Little World likes to talk scandal, in spite of Auntie Yvette’s presence—­why it will be amusing.  Cable, Darling!  I am just bursting with excitement and joy—­and fear (that something may go wrong at the last moment).  If it saved a single day I should start for Motipur myself at once.  If we passed in mid-ocean I should jump overboard and swim to your ship.  Then you’d do the same, and we should ‘get left,’ and look silly....  Oh, what nonsense I am talking—­but I don’t think I shall talk anything else again—­for sheer joy!

“You can’t write me a lot of bosh now about ‘spoiling my life’ and how you’d be ten times more miserable if I were your wife.  Fancy—­a soldier to-day and a ‘landed proprietor’ to-morrow!  How I wish you were a landed traveller, and were in the train from Plymouth—­no, from Dover and London, because of course you’d come the quickest way.  Did my cable surprise