Grandfather’s Eleventh Letter

 

Evelyn,

 

For a moment, let us stop with William, myself, and Magic and turn to a different story – yours. Let us look back together, granddaughter, to the last summer you spent in my home.

 

The reasons for the visit were the same as they have been for many years now; it is an annual retreat for your father from the pressures and pains that an honest man experiences in Parliament and a chance for you to roam the countryside and be free of clamoring, chaotic London. 

 

The two of you appeared on my doorstep in much the same fashion as every other year, a haggard, exhausted man and a chattering, sprinting little whirlwind of a child, all made of leaps and bounds and possessing a complete disregard to formality and propriety. You granted me a cursory embrace, an admonishment that I keep getting older, and then you were off to explore my home and distress my staff. All in all, it was a typical encounter.

 

Then the fever came, that burning illness which laid you low for a whole month and brought you to the edge of death. The affair nearly broke you father, poor man, and he still pales at the memory of it. Yet I have noted that you do not fret at the thought, indeed you look upon that time with no small amount of frustration. All of those days spent in bed, you once told me, could have been better invested in discovering new glades and brooks out of doors, playfully tormenting your father, or making a mess of my library.

 

 

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