The Grove School
Highgate N
Sunday March 19th /16
My dear Father
Thank you for your last letter. So you had all rain too. The weather has cheered up tremendously this weekend, it is beautifully warm today, quite a spring day.
How long is Ethel going to stay at Deal I wonder? I suppose it won't be very long before Marian gets her holiday. I should think Aunt Edith must have someone with her all the time, she couldn't manage alone, could she?
So Cyril was as far as the Suez Canal when you last heard. They seem to be sending a good many troops out to Mesopotamia. The Russian news from there is good, isn't it? And how splendidly they are resisting the attacks at Verdun.
I had such a nice letter from my French correspondent last week; she writes English quite well though of course she has a lot of mistakes in English idiom, and I can see where she has been struggling painfully with the English construction. We are going now to write our letters half in English and half in French. She has only one brother of sixteen, and her father died a few months ago, but she has several cousins fighting and her grandparents live at Colmar in what she calls "Alsace Anexée", so she says they feel very anxious about them. A week or two ago she lost her uncle at which she evidently felt very sad, and she adds rather pathetically, "So, dear Miss Sladden, if you fear or do not like to write to a sad girl, tell me, I would understand it quite well and try to find you another girl though I would be very pleased to write to you for your first letter was a very nice one and I have to praise you for it." She is going to teach, she "likes studies, especially English and Latin but I can't bare Mathematic." She tells me that long before the war she "had a great sympathy for England and wished to cross the Channel." I asked her in my letter if she had seen any English soldiers; she says, "Yes, we have none at Troyes, but I meet some at Tours, they are good people, I spoke with them." Altogether I think she is rather a nice person, and I think we shall have quite an amusing correspondence.
Next Sunday I shall be at Sydenham, and three weeks today I shall be home. I ought to see the blossom at its best this year, oughtn't I? So often but I just miss the best of it if we go back early and it is late.
We are having a Day of Wrath Tea this afternoon in the common-room. Two OGs are coming up to tea and we have invited Miss Lacey and Miss Fletcher and the other mistresses. We generally ask them once a term and we all hate it so, you know like one feels when a caller comes on Sunday!
Miss Lacey has got over her influenza but she is not looking at all well; I hope she will last out until the end of the term without any more headaches or anything.
Have you heard from Mary lately? How is Baby? I wonder if she has cut any more teeth.
Matric begins on June 6th, so we shall have exactly a month of next term before it. The results generally come out about the 26th of July. I hope they will come out after the summer term.
With love to all, I remain your affectionate daughter.
Juliet E Sladden
