14.12.16

Dear Mother. Many thanks for your letter with the pencils, somehow or other I could have told anywhere they had been sharpened by you, I shall be so sorry when I have to resharpen them. You will get a letter from me saying I had found out that the keys had never started, mind you put plenty of address about a parcel & name & address inside in case of accidents as I saw that the address on the sock chicken & woollie one had nearly got rubbed out.

Paul sent me two papers today. I heard from Karachi that June is very well & well looked after by a nice girl I knew there. Don’t forget about that lace, I know if the girls see it they’ll want it, and it’s for Cicely!

There are two rather valuable platinum & pearl rings about somewhere, I would like you to give them to the two girls who you think have behaved best during the past year!

Best love to all,

Yr loving son     Richard.

If no decision can be come to about the rings, tell Dreda, No-teeth to have one, & Dreda herself the other, for the trouble of giving it to No-teeth.

If you could get a real dough-cake sometime, have it put in a good box & sent out. Pay all postage on anything out of that £5. It’s a shame to make you pay.

Gertrude would have sharpened the pencils by hand, shaving slices of wood and graphite off with a razor-sharp pen-knife rather than by turning the ends in a pencil sharpener, which is how Richard would have recognised that she was the person who sharpened them.