Dear Pearl,

We've had the most exhausting week!  Melba's friend Martha Blueblood stayed with us over the Harvest Moon Festival and brought her two dear little girls - Penny and Daphne - with her.  Whether it was the effect of the giant super moon on their larval brains, or just being in a strange house with an absent mother (Martha and Melba disappeared at the very moment of the lunar eclipse and didn't return until after The Blessing of The Animals a week later!!), the girls were very very poorly behaved.  They refused to eat anything with nutritional value and, after days of allowing only horehound drops past their lips, succumbed to a most explosive sort of flu like illness that ran their poor housemaid absolutely ragged. We had to send Fanny to stay with Mrs Highbottom until the messiest part of it was over. I've told Melba just how I feel about all this and she is cross at me again.  Oh dear, Pearl, it's not at all like the days when we were neighbors . . . Do take care, won't you?  Say, isn't it chutney season?

Your Devoted Miss Blue