Dearest Family:—

Last week I let time and the postman creep up on me so that I didn’t have time to write, but I hope from my meager notes you have been able to get some sort of an idea of Val AndrÉ and of our household here. It has been a month of glorious weather, with such clouds and shadows as I never saw before I had a paint-box. The cliffs are high and rounded, covered with gorse, thistles, and other wild flowers. They drop steeply down to a rocky base, and then smooth away in a glorious beach. Val AndrÉ and the headlands just to the north form a sort of ace of clubs, with beaches in between. The big popular beach, edged by pink and turquoise bathing-houses and high-shouldered stone villas, we shun consistently. In the afternoon it is rather lovely to watch the ever-active little French children, barelegged and nimble, build sand-castles to stand on triumphantly until the incoming tide has flattened out their afternoon’s work. The dark-haired bonnes sit in groups on camp-chairs and sew as they gossip, and here and there a deeply veiled mother makes a dark note as she sits quietly in the shade of a brilliantly striped awning.

There is a military hospital in an old convent on the main road, and the convalescents wander around, or lean out of the windows. These and the occasional permissionnaires are the only close reminders of the war that we have. The beautiful rolling wheat-fields behind our villa are cultivated by women, and it makes my back ache to watch them lean over, hour after hour, their sunburned hands making heavy bundles of wheat.

We have spent two or three glorious nights in a favorite hollow on the hillside, just at the top of the highest falaise. We put the two big hold-alls on the ground, then a coat, then ourselves, then blankets. You never saw such stars. Early in that first morning we heard voices down on the beach below, and saw the fisherwomen with their lanterns taking fish out of big nets stretched on the sand.

Then the dawn came, and a pink and lavender and yellow sunrise. We sat up on our elbows and watched. The sand was wet, and the grass about us covered with dew. The light comes so subtly.

We didn’t wake again until after eight. Marje and I scrambled down the cliff and had a delicious swim. The water was a clear emerald and the foam as white as white!

We have had a glorious time with Miss Curtis—Aunt Midge, as we call her. The daughter of the family with whom she and Miss Sturgis have lived, Mlle. Griette, came on Thursday and makes a fascinating sixth to our party. Her father was president of the CollÈge de France and a well-known man. She is cultured to a degree, about twenty-four, and simply charming. She understands English perfectly,—her knowledge of English literature puts Marje and me to shame,—yet she hates to speak a word. In consequence, we speak English and she French, and the effect is sometimes joyous in the extreme.

Yesterday afternoon we went crabbing. Some of the costumes had to be improvised, and I’ll describe no more minutely than to say that they ranged from simplest in-wading to full bathing-suits. It is wild sport, especially if you are particularly fond of crab-meat with mayonnaise, and yet your fingers have a natural timidity!

Tableau of Marje and Mlle. Griette kneeling on slippery seaweed, prettily reflected in a pool.

“By golly, there goes one!”

“OÙ est-ce?”

“Oh, a big green one. Look under that rock, I bet he’s—”

“Zut! Il s’est ÉchappÉ—sale bÊte!!”

“Not on your tintype—not while Sister Marje has a say-so—I’ve got my finger in the small of his back; you hold him while I get the net.”

“Oh, mais, en void un plus grand! OÙ vastu, mon vieux? Oh, Oh, il me tient! Oh, lÀ, lÀ!—Il manque de charme, celui-ci—enfin Ça est”—etc., etc.

For two hours we splashed around, chasing and pouncing and yelling, and got in all sixteen crabs—some whoppers. Then we took a luscious swim in the clear sunlit water.

This mixture of dolce far niente and a lark is going to put us in fine trim for the fall work. Don’t forget, Father, you’re going to get some confiding editor or journalist to send me to the devastated towns?