December 17, 1908
Kelowna, B. C.
My dearest Kathleen,
I got your letter [Kathleen–December 3, 1908] today with the account of your interview with Mr. Chappell. Assuredly I laughed. I should love to have seen your face under cross-examination. Mr. Chappell of all people–his unfortunate impediment would make such a conversation doubly embarassing. I admire his astuteness in getting away when he saw he had made a break, for he probably knew as well as you did that he was talking to Miss Freer. I am sure there is a sequel because he would be sure to spend the rest of the day telling all his friends about it and pointing you out as the girl he mistook for Miss Freer. I conclude though that it is a fairly well known fact by this time, so I suppose your aunt has talked the matter over with a good many people who have all retailed it to their dearest friends and probably you will have a few more conversations of the same kind. I expect that “Mummie” does quite a lot of talking herself to anybody who happens to go to tea at Daylesford.
I am going to another dance on Friday night, “The Curlers’ Ball”. I am not the least keen about it and don’t really know why I’m going, except that it’s no good staying at home. I feel rather like Damocles must have done with a sword suspended over his head, except that he could move out of the way and I have still some little while to wait before I know whether the sword will fall or not.
We have got a return of the cold weather but no snow so I hope to get some more skating at the Mallams’ next Sunday. Harry Leigh and I went to the Cleminsons’ last week end and played bridge most of the time except for a spell of vingt et un at which I had preposterous luck. It is purely a gambling game and at such I always lose. I always enjoy it though, so I suppose by nature I am a bit of a gambler; but the necessity for economy and a modicum of common sense tells me that such luxuries are not for the likes of me. I brought back two black kittens from the Cleminsons’ which about this hour of the night (10:00 o’clock) seem to go off their heads and chase each other madly all over the furniture, to the great disgust of a rather dignified spaniel who occupies the other chair in front of the fire.
I stained the floor of the best room upstairs today. I don’t think it’s quite what I meant but perhaps when it’s had another coat it will be all right. I hope to get the whole upstairs done in the course of time.
There is very little doing just now and yet the time seems to go at a tremendous speed, that is, when I look back; but looking forward one thinks that next week will never come. I nearly always go away from Saturday to Monday, which only leaves four clear days at home and two afternoons of that are taken up going to town; and what little time remains is taken up with odd jobs like building the engine house (which is now finished), making and hanging a couple of gates, and generally getting things ship-shape either inside or outside; and the evenings for some reason are never too long. We usuallly have supper over and everything washed up by 7:00 o’clock and yet it’s usually nearer 11:00 o’clock than 10:00 when I go to bed, and if I have a book worth reading sometimes a good deal later.
You ought to get this letter about the New Year–the year I was counting on so much and I still count on it, Kathleen. All my wishes for it, dear, I hope it will be the happiest you have ever known and that before the end of it you will be my wife, which is what I want more than anything in the world.
With all my love,
Yours as always,
Robin