Seward House
Badsey
4th December 1897
My dear May
Thank you very much for your letter & good wishes for my birthday which I received this morning, my love also to Kathleen & thanks for her letter. I am sending you the money for the stays, I am so sorry I forgot to send it to the people & that they should have written to you again. Really they had no right to send you the bill at all, I ordered the things & they should have claimed the money from me. I am still getting on well & have been on the sofa several days. I daresay the doctors will allow me to go downstairs some time next week. Baby is such a good little thing, just as placid & contented as you used to be as a baby, she is certainly rather like you & George, I can’t nurse her I am sorry to say, so she has to be entirely a bottle baby but fortunately her food seems to agree very well with her. Kathleen wants to know which of the two proposed names I prefer, Rosalind or Juliet. I like them both & tell Father he must decide. Juliet would be rather nice as it would be calling her after Father; Father thinks her a very nice little Baby. I believe he will make quite as much fuss of her as did of any of you, so that with all the petting of brothers & sisters, I shall have to be a very stern mother indeed to prevent her from being quite spoilt. Remember me kindly to Sister Mary Susanna & thank her for her kind congratulations. Ethel and Cyril were to have come home today, but Auntie wanted them to stop a little longer now she is home so they will not be back till Wednesday. Jack comes back on Thursday, he is going to be Baby’s godfather.
Mrs Willridge, our lady servant, came on Thursday evening, she looks very much as if she had been half starved, but I hope a little good food will soon improve her in that way. Mary is showing her the way round & I think she finds her a bit slow, however I daresay she will get quicker when she is used to it & she seems ready to accept the situation & have no fine-lady ideas about not doing this & that & the other. I hope Emily is not sickening for the measles & that her cold will soon be better. I am quite looking forward to taking you to your first dance when you come home. We shall have to see what dress we can get for you that will be pretty & not too serious [?], of course it must be white.
Now with much love to you both,
Believe me,
Your loving mother
Eugénie N. Sladden
