Your loving

    Anne.

    Nieuport. September 7th.

Dear Anne,—­Now that you have gone I think I ought to tell you that it would be just as well if you didn’t come back.  I’ve got a man to take your place; Queenie picked him up at Dunkirk the day you sailed, and he’s doing very well.

The fact is we’re getting on much better since you left.  There’s perfect peace now.  You and Queenie didn’t hit it off, you know, and for a job like ours it’s absolutely essential that everybody should pull together like one.  It doesn’t do to have two in a Corps always at loggerheads.

I don’t like to lose you, and I know you’ve done splendidly.  But I’ve got to choose between Queenie and you, and I must keep her, if it’s only because she’s worked with me all the time.  So now that you’ve made the break I take the opportunity of asking you to resign.  Personally I’m sorry, but the good of the Corps must come before everything.

    Sincerely yours,

    Robert Cutler.

    The Manor, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.

    September 11th, 1915.

Dear Dicky,—­This is only to say good-bye, as I shan’t see you again.  Cutler’s fired me out of the Corps.  He says it’s because Queenie and I don’t hit it off.  I shouldn’t have thought that was my fault, but he seems to think it is.  He says there’s been perfect peace since I left.

    Well, we’ve had some tremendous times together, and I wish we
    could have gone on.

    Good-bye and Good Luck,

    Yours ever,

    Anne Severn.

P. S.—­Poor Colin Fielding’s in an awful state.  But he’s been a bit better since I came.  Even if Cutler’d let me come back I couldn’t leave him.  This is my job.  The queer thing is he’s afraid of Queenie, so it’s just as well she didn’t come home.

    Nieuport.

    September 15th, 1915.

Dear Old Thing,—­We’re all furious here at the way you’ve been treated.  I’ve resigned as a protest, and I’m going into the R. A. M. So has Miss Mullins—­:  resigned I mean—­so Queenie’s the only woman left in the Corps.  That’ll suit her down to the ground.

I gave myself the treat of telling Cutler what I jolly well think of him.  But of course you know she made him hoof you out.  She’s been trying for it ever since you joined.  It’s all rot his saying you didn’t hit it off with her, when everybody knows you were a perfect angel to her.  Why, you backed her every time when we were all going for her.  It’s quite true that the peace of God has settled on the Corps since you left it; but that’s only because Queenie doesn’t rage round any more.

You’ll observe that she never went for Miss Mullins.  That’s because Miss Mullins kept well out of the line of fire.