Compass rose on upper back

The landlady at Gull Cottage has finally let me have the attic room with the sloping ceiling, which means I can pin the chart flat on the floorboards and work on my knees without anyone banging on the wall. Mrs Pargeter says the damp will ruin the paper, but she said the same about my last three lodgers and none of them left a stain on anything except the bath.

The rose is nearly finished. I drew the north point first, as you taught me, with the long needle of the spike pointing towards the window, then worked outward until all eight rays lay across the paper like the spokes of a wheel someone had dropped in the surf. The west point gave me trouble. My nib kept skating, so I shaded it in small hatched lines, the way the old instrument makers did, until it looked less like a blade and more like a shadow thrown by the sea.

There is a man on the third floor who sits by the stairs every evening with a sextant he cannot use any more. He asked me yesterday which way the pier was. I told him, and he nodded and said it was the only useful thing anyone had told him since the war, and then he asked me to draw it for him. I have said yes. It will be my first commission, and I am charging him a shilling and a bag of barley sugar.

I will post the rose to you on Friday, rolled in oilcloth so the salt does not get in. Keep it flat. Tell me if the south point looks too heavy, because I cannot tell any more. Write soon, and tell Father the lamp in the workshop is fine to leave lit.

Yours, Ada