Dec. 7, '18

Dearest Pal:

I have just got your letter asking for law books. It amused me rather but I suppose it is really very practical and you will enjoy them more than lighter books particularly when I'm not there to read them to you! Do you remember all the books we read together at Seaford - �Secret Bread' and �Mrs. Moxon protests" and all the rest of them including Lloyd George's Progress and Poverty.

Are you still sitting at [?] waiting for orders. I hope you do go on to the Rhine. It would be a great disappointment to me if you didn't get there. I like to hear you talk in that airy way of going to Brussels tomorrow! It seems strange to think all those places are possible now without any enemy to blow you out of them.

I went to the theatre twice yesterday - to the Palladium in the afternoon with three men and in the evening Mrs. Inglis and I went to "The Lilac Domino' at the Empire. The latter was a Christmas present from Sir Arthur Pearson - a seat in the stalls to each VAD and we could go to whatever theatre and whenever we chose. It was really a very nice Christmas box and we enjoyed last night very much.

Today we had an interview with Lady [P?] - she wanted to know what chevrons or stripes we were entitled to and much to our dismay we find we haven't earned any. If we had been VAD when we came from Canada we could have claimed blue chevrons all the same as yours. But unfortunately that hope fled. Then we asked about stripes and if our work before we became VADs counted. That too was rather disappointing. I can only count what I did at Bramshott in the hospital there. My six months canteen work in London doesn't count as Red Cross work. Isn't it a [?]. I could have put up one stripe and been a lance corporal if that had counted. However, the war is over so who cares. All my love dear heart and do get home before very long.

Your little pal Alice Leighton