With the onset of summer Drinkwater and Elizabeth left the children in the care of Susan Tregembo and travelled, spending Christmas at Sir Richard and Lady White's home in Norfolk where their children, Charlotte-Amelia and their own Richard, had joined them. It had been a memorable few months at the end of which Drinkwater's convalescence was complete. It was from the Whites' house that Drinkwater wrote to the Admiralty soliciting further employment. Nothing came of his application, however, and he was not much concerned. The short, cold winter days of walking or riding, of wildfowling along the frozen salt-marsh, were pleasant enough, but the luxury of the long, pleasurable evenings with Elizabeth and the Whites was not lightly to be forsaken for the dubious honour of a quarterdeck in winter.

'You'll only get some damned seventy-four blockading Brest with the Black Rocks under your lee, and some damn fool sending you signals all day,' White had mistakenly consoled him. For although Drinkwater did not have the means for an indefinite stay ashore, nor the inclination to consider his career over and to be superseded by the back-benches of the House of Commons, life was too pleasant not to submit, at least for the time being, to the whim of fate.

Games of bezique and whist, the sound of his daughter's voice singing to Elizabeth's accompaniment, the warmth of White's stable and the smell of fresh meat from the kitchen had served to keep him content. Elizabeth was happy, and that alone was reward enough. He had played with Richard, Montcalm to his son's Wolfe as they re-fought the capture of Quebec above a low clay cliff undercut by the River Glaven. Richard, a year senior to White's boy Johnnie, died spectacularly in his young friend's arms with victory assured as Drinkwater himself expired uncomfortably among the crackling stalks of long-dead bracken.