December 4, 1908
Kelowna, B. C.
My dearest Kathleen,
I am sending you today a necklace as a Christmas present. All my love goes with it and a most fervent prayer that you will wear it and then I shall know I am forgiven and that I can once more think of you as really mine, as I have always done until this last fortnight. I wish I could be there to see if you do wear it.
We have had a week of frightfully cold weather, 20° of frost some nights but no snow at all yet. I wish the snow had come first. Your fireplace has its work cut out keeping this room warm. You ask questions about the house, Kathleen, that I really haven’t the heart to answer. [The reference is probably to Kathleen–November 10, 1908.] You may take such a severe view of what I have done that I may have built it to no purpose. I can’t believe that though, that you will never see this house, but I really can’t write all about what rooms are which and what they were intended for. When I was halfway through that first letter to you Mrs. Mallam and a friend of hers came to tea and to see the house. They thought it awfully nice and of course chaffed me that it was much too big for a batchelor and that I hadn’t done all this for myself. With your letter lying half finished in my desk, I began to wonder what on earth I had done it for.
I went downtown with Harry last Wednesday. He wanted to get a lot of stuff so we took his buggy and I drove Jess in it. We tied up in town and went off to do our shopping and while we were away another horse and cart ran away and the horse, going as hard as ever it could, charged our buggy and smacked both front wheels and the shafts, and the contents were scattered around in all directions. Lookers-on say that it was a marvellous thing that Jess wasn’t killed as the other rig just missed her and as it was coming broadside on and at a tremendous speed, she would not have had much chance. The other horse wasn’t hurt either, which was rather extraordinary.
I am going to spend Christmas with the Cleminsons’. I don’t much mind where I spend it as long as I don’t get left in solitary grandeur at home. I don’t suppose I shall hear from you till the New Year. I wish that would hurry up and come. It seems to me now that I should have been wiser to say nothing about it. I am glad I have though, as it’s some consolation to feel honest. All’s fair in love, they say, so I might have married you without saying anything and you would never have known, but I suppose it would have rankled all the time in my conscience. I wish I was back with you at Kitebrook. I am sure I could make you forgive me if I could tell you all about it. It is so hard to write and I think I could convince you how much I love you and surely that would plead my cause as well as anything could.
I hope you will get this letter before Christmas and will read it and forgive me then if you haven’t already, and then I think you will have a happy Christmas; so, now more than ever, do I wish you a very happy Christmas.
With all my love, dear,
Yours as always,
Robin