Commonplace Book

'...There are about seven men in every hut who are expecting important letters that never seem to reach them, and there are always individuals who glower at you and tell you that they invariably get a letter from home on Tuesday; by Thursday they are firmly convinced that you have set all their relations against them. There was one young man in Hut 3 whose reproachful looks got on my nerves to such an extent that at last I wrote him a letter from his Aunt Agatha, a letter full of womanly counsel and patient reproof, such as any aunt might have been proud to write. Possibly he hasn't got an Aunt Agatha; anyhow the reproachful look has been replaced by a puzzled frown.'

from a piece by Saki in The Bystander, dated June 1915, quoted in the section entitled Biography of Saki by Ethel M Munro, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki