Roses and berries botanical design drawing

The wind has finally dropped, so I can hold the pen steady enough to tell you what the mainland post will not hear about. Mr Pargeter sent the proofs back with a note saying the roses on plate nine look like "two cabbages in a quarrel". I have spent three nights stippling their petals with the finest nib I own, and I will not have him say that. The ink keeps drying on the tip, so I have been breathing on it like a doctor warming a stethoscope.

The berries are the worst of it. Each one needs a hundred small dots to look wet, and the rowan on Carn Bray has been stripped by the starlings, so I walked to the old bramble hedge above the quay and cut what was left. Mrs Tregenza watched me from her gate and asked whether I meant to eat them. I told her they were for the duke, and she laughed so hard she had to sit on the wall.

I have one rose left to finish, the one at the centre, which I drew first and have now redrawn four times. Each time the petals open a little less. I think it is because I keep trying to make it match the one in Mother's album, and that one was never open at all, only pressed flat between two sheets of blotting paper. Tomorrow I will stop copying and simply draw what is on the table: the ruler, the pen, the bent stem.

Come home at Michaelmas if the boat runs. The peony bud in the corner is still shut tight, and I would like you to see whether it opens before I post the sheet.

Your loving sister, Clara