Boulogne Jan 23 Dearest Mother. The enclosed from Miss Beattie. I send a signed cheque and will you fill it in for £10 or whatever you think proper. I can't judge how much she needs it, but I'm quite ready to lend - or give - it to her if she wants her. I send too a garden bill and a very small M'bro [Middlesbrough] account which from this distance I can't pay. Mr Malcolm has been here the last day or two. He is a very excellent diplomat and has settled up some rather complicated business with old Sir Hutchison Poe, the result being that we take on privates as well as officers, for which I am very glad.
I am going to have a third type writer at my own expense. I can't get through the office work with two and I hate working them to death as I'm doing now.

Percy Lubbock has arrived, long and gaunt, in a suit of khaki dittos - a strange figure. He announces that he is going to stay with us till the end of the war! We are going to set him to a long indexing job tomorrow morning - I hope he'll like it. But that's the sort of thing we spent most of our time doing.

This week - did I tell you? - I have been revising and commenting on the War Office list of missing, which I found to contain many errors of omission and commission. I have sent my notes in to Lord Robert and suggested that in future we should be allowed to revise the proof sheet. I don't know if the W.O. will agree, but we know much more, naturally about the missing than they do.

Oh Mother I sometimes wonder whether I have been doing this all my days and shall do it for the rest of my natural life. Ever your affectionate Gertrude.

The purple silk hat is a great success.