Letter № 3 · from Iris, Brighton
On the Coat
❦
Dear S., — I have been issued a third coat. It is a "puffer." It is, I am told, "for me." I have not asked for it. I have not, in any of my deliberate movements, suggested I require it. And yet, when the door is opened, on it goes. I do not know what to do. The wind is cold, but I am, perhaps, colder still.
S. replies:
Dear Iris, — The whippet's condition is a peculiar one, and I write this from a household which would, I assure you, never trouble you with a fourth coat. The Mrs once observed, on watching a whippet pass our window in deep January, that the breed seemed to have been designed by a committee unaware that England was, ultimately, a damp country. I have thought about this often.
The coat is, alas, the small price of being thin and elegant in a nation of stout creatures. Wear it. Look magnificent. Accept the small parade you have unintentionally become. There is, I find, a strange dignity in being the only one of one's kind who needs assistance from a zip.
Yours, with warm regard from beside the fire, — S.