The days are getting longer. Amazing what that five or ten minutes more of light does to lift our spirits. Now the sun is setting at teatime. We sit by the window and watch it go down behind the trees. The skies have been very luminous, a marvelous pale green above, then orange, and the hills a brilliant purple. I never realized how much color there is in winter. Some beech leaves cling on, pale yellow. The trunks of trees look almost red at times. Whatever color there is—a blue jay’s wing—stands out against all the white, and I wear a red shirt myself because Cornelius tells me it makes my eyes look bluer than ever.

We have given up Proust. After Swann’s Way, the best of the book I have always felt, it became faintly incongruous. The elaborate sentences, the rich tapestry of feeling, and, alas, the endless hair-splitting about class, began to be tedious. Willard and all that concerns us here fills our minds now. It seems as if we have been making a journey into Willard, and it never ceases to be interesting and illuminating.

But winter takes its toll. First Jane slipped away. And now poor Old Pete is in the hospital with both feet frozen and one leg up to the knee. He hailed my car a week ago when I was on my way to do the shopping, said I had to take him to the hospital right away. Fortunately I could go—Ellen was up at the Ark. He had let his fire go out, of course “under the influence.” Said the chimney smoked and he was choking to death so there was nothing else to do. I must confess that I didn’t take him seriously, thought he was just feeling dispirited, but we went to the emergency room, waited an hour, and finally they unwrapped his poor feet from the old rags he wore, and told me the truth. It looks as if he will lose them both. How awful! Whatever will he do? How will he manage?