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Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story

Chapter 169: CXLVI Roy Barrance to his sister Hazel
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About This Book

Presented as a sequence of letters, the work follows the responses of friends and relatives when a woman at her country home sustains a spinal injury and must remain flat for a long recovery. Correspondence records medical opinions, practical arrangements for nursing and household care, visitors and neighborhood support, and small domestic consolations such as reading aloud, recorded music, and an adapted form of solitaire. Through exchanges of news, requests, and observations, the letters map family connections and local characters while illustrating how community, resourcefulness, and affectionate concern reshape daily life during enforced convalescence.

CXLVI
Roy Barrance to his sister Hazel

Darling Hazel, Old Thing,—Wish me luck because I am starting out on the biggest enterprise of my life. What a pity we are not Roman Catholics and then you could burn candles for me. I am going down to Aunt Verena’s to propose to Clemency Power, that divine Irish girl. I wrote to her last night but I’m such a rotten letter-writer that I’m going down to see her in person and learn my fate. I even tried to get the letter back, but postmen are so rottenly honest. I waited for hours in the rain for the pillar-box to be emptied and offered him two pounds and an old overcoat, but all he did was to threaten to call a policeman. If she accepts me I shall be the luckiest man on earth and there’s nothing I shan’t be able to do. You’ll see. But if she turns me down I don’t know what will happen. I shall probably become a film-actor in broken-hearted stories. Lots of people have said I have the right kind of mobile face for the movies, and really there’s nothing infra dig in it. Clemency is two or three years older than I am, but I think that’s all to the good. What I need is a steadying hand. You will adore her.—Yours ever,

Roy