Robert was not nearly as ill as we expected he would be and in a few weeks I was able to make definite plans for joining my husband. My sister, Mrs. Anderson, was going to Paris so I took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy her companionship on the voyage and sailed with her on the fourth of June, landing in France and going by train to Rome.

That the record of our ill-luck may be quite complete I must add that on the way across the Atlantic my son Charlie managed to pick up whooping-cough, and that by the time we reached Rome he had passed it on to Helen. Her first remark to her father was a plaintive query: “Papa, why is it we can never go anywhere without catching something?”

I devoutly hoped that we had caught everything there was to catch and that we might now venture to predict a period of peace.