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Morale

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grumpy

]

Mrs Ducas has gone out to look for a flat and no-one knows when she will return. No-one has told our elderly servant what was wanted for supper, so she has just begun to make it and Lavinia cannot tell what it is meant to be.

My son is here, and he says he cannot go home because he has told his mother that he is spending the night with the Trelawneys, whom I do not know, but whom I assume (perhaps unjustifiably) Priscilla knows. I told him that I do not like it when he lies to his mother, and he asked me if I would prefer that he tell her the truth about having come here with the intention of introducing himself to his half-sister and preferring to stay here with her and the other children who live here over sitting at home by himself waiting for her and Adele to come home. I suppose it could have been worse. He could have told me that he was merely following my example.

Miss Davies was glaring daggers at Lavinia all morning, and she has not seen fit to tell either of us why. Not that I could not guess.

Aristotle Mablin believes that I am the Anti-Christ and Lavinia is the Whore of Babylon. (I have half a mind to write him back and ask him how this can be true when we have not yet won the war, let alone united the nations under one banner.)

Adele thinks that I have abandoned her because Priscilla wouldn't let me stay there until the children came home last night so that we could explain things to them.

And Susannah wants to know when Priscilla and I would like to meet her American, though I may finally have disabused her of the notion that having us meet him together is a good idea.