FOSTER’S HOTEL,
WANGANUI, N.Z.
W H G FOSTER PROPRIETOR
Saturday Apr 21st /06
My dear Juliet
I have owed you a letter for some time so I think I will just manage to send you a few lines this morning before I go out.
I was very pleased with Scot and the cats’ letters the other day. I had sent Scot and one of the cats a post card just before I got their letters. I hope they will arrive safely.
Auntie Lottie and I are going on to Marton today to see our cousin Percy and his wife Mary and their two little children whose names are Dilnot and Jessica, the little girl is quite a baby. I expect you would like to be going to see them. There was a little girl about your age staying at the house we were at in Auckland, she was very fond of babies and very fond of reading just like you, she used to sit curled up on a sofa with “Little Lord Fauntleroy” which she liked very much. Then there was a little boy of six years old named Ian and a little girl of two months Jean and a baby of seven months, all these children lived in Bombay. Ian was very proud of himself because he was such a traveller, he had been home to England three times – Jean looked so good as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but Ian used to tell us Jean was not so good as she looked!
There were such pretty flowers everywhere in Auckland, chrysanthemums were just coming out and they had a lot in the garden at Glenalvon. You would like to have seen all the Maori people we saw coming down the river yesterday – the women look so funny they wear very bright coloured blouses and skirts, their skin is very dark and their hair nearly black. The old women generally sit on the ground and smoke a pipe. They always carry babies on their backs instead of in their arms - and sometimes you see a little girl of five or six with a big baby on her back, it looks as if it must roll off but it never seems to.
I must go out now and post this and get a newspaper so goodbye.
With much love from
May may.
