“ Mme. Sazerat gave us one of those little luncheons of which she possesses the secret and which, as your poor grandmother would have said, quoting Mme. de Sévigné, deprive us of solitude without affording us company.”

In one of my own earlier letters I was so inept as to write to Mamma:

“By those quotations, your mother would recognise you at once.”

“By those quotations, your mother would recognise you at once.”

Which brought me, three days later, the reproof: