Leafy sprig and script down the spine

Mrs Pryce has finally let me have the back bedroom over the kitchen, so the damp no longer creeps through the wallpaper in the shape of a map of Ireland. You will laugh, but I have been pressing things again. Yesterday I found a sprig of bay caught in the hem of the linen, still smelling of the hedge behind the chapel, and I laid it between the pages of the old hymnal Mr Aske left on the landing. The leaves have gone the colour of weak tea, but the berries kept their red, which seems unfair.

Mr Aske, who has been in room four since Whitsun, asked me what I was copying so carefully at the breakfast table. I told him it was the line Father carved over the stable door: tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. He said that was a sentence for men who had lost their money, then ate three of Mrs Pryce's kippers and walked out along the front without his hat. The wind took the hat before the pier, and I watched a gull carry it off towards Hastings like a thief with good manners.

I have started a second copy for you on the good paper, so you have something to put beside the tea caddy. The sea has been grey all week, but on Thursday the light came in low across the shingle and every stalk on the windowsill threw a shadow onto the wall, fine and green as pen strokes. I thought of you then, and of how we used to swear the seasons only changed to annoy us.

Write soon. Tell me whether Mr Aske has paid his bill, and whether the hat ever came back.

Yours, Ada