Yours in haste, ALEC RIDLEY.

DEAR ALEC,—­I wish you’d be less vague.  What sort of a boat do you want—­schooner, yawl, cutter or spoonbill?  A half-decker, or the full five quires to the ream?  Give me definite instructions and I’ll do my best to carry them out.  I’m afraid I can’t get off, so you’ll have to take someone else, or incarnadine the seas by yourself.

    Yours as ever, GARRY.

DEAR GARRY,—­Sorry to hear you can’t come.  Any kind of a boat that will go without bouncing too high will do, and if it has a rudder, a couple of starboard tacks, bath and butler’s pantry so much the better.  I mean to wash out the memory of those nine months at Basra last year with the flies.  Yours, ALEC.

    DEAR ALEC,—­What you want, my lad, is a houseboat, and I doubt
    whether you’ll get one during this shortage of residential
    property.

I should try fishing if I were you.  In fact I have taken a bit of water for you in Chamshire.  I haven’t seen it, but am told it’s very all right and only twenty pounds till the 10th of June.

    Yours ever, GARRY NORTON.

    DEAR GARRY,—­This is a top-hole place.  To have got this water
    for so little you ’re absolutely the Senior Wangler.

You might send me some mayflies, old dear; about half a pint I shall want, judging from the infernal number of bushes on the river banks here.  Mr. MILLS’s bombs have put me right off my cast and I can’t do the old Shimmy shake either somehow.  I can hear the click of croquet balls in the Vicarage garden as I write, so the hooping season has begun.

    There’s one other chap staying in the pub.  Talks and dresses
    like a War profiteer.  Seems to be doing nothing but loafing
    about at present.

    Yours ever, ALEC.

    Postcard.

    Have ordered the mayflies and will send them soon as poss.  G.
    N.

    DEAR GARRY,—­Thanks for yours.  Not so anxious about mayflies
    now, but should be glad if you would send me a pound or two of
    the best chocolates.  Having good sport.

    In haste for post,

    Yours, ALEC.

    DEAR ALEC,—­I enclose a couple of pounds of extra special
    chocolates, but didn’t know they were included in the Angler’s
    Pharmacopoeia.

    Glad you are having good sport and justifying my choice of
    water.

    Yours as usual, GARRY.

DEAR GARRY,—­Thanks for chocs.  The Vicar called the other day, and I have caught several cups of tea on the recoil at the Vicarage since.  Miss Stevenson, his ewe-lamb, is A1, and we have had some splendid sport together.  We caught eleven beauties yesterday; one was over 19-1/2 inches.

    Post just going out.

    Yours in haste, ALEC.