LETTER XIV.

Own Dearest:  Come I did not think that you would, or mean that you should seriously; for is it not a poor way of love to make the object of it cut an absurd or partly absurd figure?  I wrote only as a woman having a secret on the tip of her tongue and the tips of her fingers, and full of a longing to say it and send it.

Here it is at last:  love me for it, I have worked so hard to get it done!  And you do not know why and what for?  Beloved, it—­this—­is the anniversary of the day we first met; and you have forgotten it already or never remembered it:—­and yet have been clamoring for “the letters”!

On the first anniversary of our marriage, if you remember it, you shall have those same letters:  and not otherwise.  So there they lie safe till doomsday!

The M.-A. has been very gracious and clear after her little outbreak of yesterday:  her repentances, after I have hurt her feelings, are so gentle and sweet, they always fill me with compunction.  Finding that I would go on with the thing I was doing, she volunteered to come and read to me:  a requiem over the bone of contention which we had gnawed between us.  Was not that pretty and charitable?  She read Tennyson’s Life for a solid hour, and continued it to-day.  Isn’t it funny that she should take up such a book?—­she who “can’t abide” Tennyson or Browning or Shakespeare:  only likes Byron, I suppose because it was the right and fashionable liking when she was young.  Yet she is plodding through the Life religiously—­only skipping the verses.  I have come across two little specimens of “Death and the child” in it.  His son, Lionel, was carried out in a blanket one night in the great comet year, and waking up under the stars asked, “Am I dead?” Number two is of a little girl at Wellington’s funeral who saw his charger carrying his boots, and asked, “Shall I be like that after I die?”

A queer old lady came to lunch yesterday, a great traveler, though lame on two crutches.  We carefully hid all guide-books and maps, and held our peace about next month, lest she should insist on coming too:  though I think Nineveh was the place she was most anxious to go to, if the M.-A. would consent to accompany her!

Good-by, dearest of one-year-old acquaintances! you, too, send your blessing on the anniversary, now that my better memory has reminded you of it!  All that follow we will bless in company.  I trust you are one-half as happy as I am, my own, my own.

LETTER XV.

You told me, dearest, that I should find your mother formidable.  It is true; I did.  She is a person very much in the grand pagan style:  I admire it, but I cannot flow in that sort of company, and I think she meant to crush me.  You were very wise to leave her to come alone.

I like her:  I mean I believe that under that terribleness she has a heart of gold, which once opened would never shut:  but she has not opened it to me.  I believe she could have a great charity, that no evil-doing would dismay her:  “stanch” sums her up.  But I have done nothing wrong enough yet to bring me into her good graces.  Loving her son, even, though, I fear, a great offense, has done me no good turn.