I was obviously not clear enough in my last instructions. While it was very well for you to go with your woman on her outing to the solicitor's town last week, it would have been better to have prevented her entirely. And please do not come to tell me that you almost caused her to forget, that you had her at two parties each of the previous weekends. We in Hell strive for direct hits on our marks, not close approaches. However much ground you fail to cover, the Enemy can begin to use to His advantage -- as we shall see from your reports to me.
Remember that this town was not only that of the solicitor, but of that Professor fool. It was here that your woman first encountered the Enemy on the terms you have helped her to repress. From that town, it became only a short walk -- past some winter coats, of all things -- to where the Enemy waited for that whole family, to show them what He means to do with all those human creatures. He wanted, as He still wants, to make kings and queens of them, and to call them by new and everlasting names. We cannot create such names, but we can mar and blur their images for as long as the creatures live in their world.
Your woman's name, as the Enemy gave it her, was Gentle. Her kindness to the beasts of her world and of the Enemy's is a kindness He wrote on her heart at her birth, so please do not waste your effort in trying to erase that. Rather, continue to turn it around, to invert it -- keep her more concerned for the mice in her walls than for any of those young human males of whose affection she has tired and toward whom she lacks the decency to tell except over the telephone. And no, we may not dwell on her siblings -- with names as repugnant as Valiant, and Just, and Magnificent, the Enemy can have them! Only be thankful to Our Father Below that their losses are neither of our responsibilities.
But back to the solicitor and his wife. While we would prefer to have people think hard about why they show kindness, if and when they do, it comes almost as naturally to this couple's hearts as the sun comes over the eastern hills. Theirs is a compassion not motivated by condescension, or greed, or any feeling of self-importance, such as your woman has seen in whatever churches she deigns to attend -- and her not doing so is another tally beside your name. They act as they do because the Enemy is saying to them, "Here is someone I love as I have loved you, and as I continue to do. Go and follow My example." Mark how willingly they act on that, and your woman's response. With neither she nor we having her family, she has decided to take to them, that she may feel Safe in the knowledge that there is again a human creature to whom she has come to matter for more than a weekend and that with which we fill it.
Make no mistake -- the Enemy has fixed these creatures with the desire for fullness of heart, and He alone can offer that in just the manner and volume required. All we can offer, through the agency of Our Father Below, are counterfeits -- but there are enough of them, and of creatures who will accept them, that we need not worry on the grand scale just yet. On souls themselves, though, we do well to take concern.
Now here is the worst of it -- the solicitor and his wife have children, one of each gender. There is a young man, much the same age as your woman's elder brother; his sister, the age of your woman's other brother. I wish it were not so, but it seems that I must explain why your woman should be kept from them: they are the type whose presence encourages Honesty. By this, I do not mean our brand of it, with lying awake and wallowing in despair over our showing them what they are. No, this is the way the Enemy meant it. It is the sort of desire to set all to rights, to care so deeply for their fellow creatures as not to do them harm by withholding the Truth. The daughter will seek to befriend your woman; worse still, the son already thinks himself led of the Enemy to care for her as no man has done, nor that she has permitted. He is not simply in love with her -- which, as you know, we have made into nothing beyond infatuation and an endocrine addiction. No. In even so short a time, both siblings love her already, have begun to care for her well-being in such a way as cannot help drawing her closer to the Enemy. But it is on the young man that we need to keep our eyes -- he may actually come to love her more deeply. The next step, as you know, is for them to be what the Enemy calls Married -- One Flesh with each other. In that, there is the danger of her abandoning her promiscuity -- oh, do not drop your guard, child! As to that young man, he is certainly keeping Threadpin's hands full. I must speak with Threadpin at once concerning your woman, that he may tell his man; it may come to naught, but we dare not slack our efforts now.
Most of the time, when your woman is in that building called a Church, she concerns herself with which of her friends she may meet, or how to dress in such a way as to attract whatever fellow can undo her dressing, or in picking apart the pastor's homily. But when your woman came into the family's Church that morning, she encountered that contagion known as the Peace that Passeth Understanding. Not just the solicitor's family, but so many others, were crawling with it, in their words and their actions. To that extent, your woman's eyes began to condense, as she started seeing how that blinding Love shows forth from the Enemy, through His people, and offers them even the slightest refuge against our marching apace across their world. Then came the words we have dreaded so long.
Your woman dropped her head before the Enemy, and showed us up for liars and incompetents. Try as we dare to block it, the Enemy will not relent from His love for those creatures -- she said as much. If that had not been enough, she then thanked Him for loving even such a disgusting thing as she is! What can come next but her taking a public stand for Him?
Please do not tax my maternal feelings any more than you are doing with your bungling. I want to feel for you as my daughter, not as my dinner.
Your fearful yet affectionate mother,
Slumtrimpet