The summer was passed at Milford, near Godalming, in a house at the very edge of the heather country which from there stretches unbroken past Hindhead and into Wolmer Forest.  So well did he like the place that he took it again the following year.  But his holiday was like to have been spoilt at the beginning by the strain of an absurd adventure which involved much fatigue and more anxiety.]

I came back only last night [he writes to Sir M. Foster on August 1] from Paris, where I sped on Sunday night, in a horrid state of alarm from a cursed blundering telegram which led me to believe that Leonard (you know he got his first class to our great joy) who had left for the continent on Saturday, was ill or had had an accident.

[It was indeed a hurried journey.  On receipt of the telegram, he rushed to Victoria only to miss the night mail.  The booking-clerk suggested that he should drive to London Bridge, take train to Lewes, and thence take a fly to Newhaven, where he ought to catch a later boat.  The problem was to catch the London Bridge train.  There was barely a quarter of an hour, but thanks to a good horse and the Sunday absence of traffic, the thing was done, establishing, I believe, what the modern mind delights in, a record in cab-driving.  Happily the anxiety at not finding his son in Paris was soon allayed by another telegram from home, where his son-in-law, the innocent sender of the original message, had meanwhile arrived.  He writes to Sir M. Foster:—­]

Judging by my scrawl, which is worse than usual, I should say the anxiety had left its mark, but I am none the worse otherwise.

[This was indeed the case.  Other letters to Sir M. Foster show that he was unusually well, perhaps because he was really making holiday to some extent.  Thus on August 16, he writes:—­]

This is a lovely country, and I have been reading novels and walking about for the last four days.  I must be all right, wind and limb, for I walked over twenty miles the day before yesterday, and except a blister on one heel, was none the worse.

[And again on September 12:—­]

Have been very lazy lately, which means that I have done a great many things that I need not have done, and have left undone those which I ought to have done.  Nowadays that seems to me to be the real definition of a holiday.

[For once he was not doing very much holiday work, though he was filing at the Rede Lecture to get it into shape for publication.  The examinations for the Science and Art Department were over, and indeed he writes to Sir M. Foster:—­]

Don’t bother your head about the balance—­now or hereafter.  To tell you the truth I do so little in the Examiner business that I am getting ashamed of taking even the retaining fee, and you will do me a favour if you will ease my conscience.

[A week of fishery business in South Wales and Devon had] “a good deal of holiday in it.” [for the rest:—­]