Well, I’m not going to grumble.  It’s only that I love you so, and miss you so very much.  You know how I always missed you on Sunday in Berlin, because then I had time to feel, to remember; and here it is all Sundays.  I’ve had two of them already, yesterday and today, and I don’t know what it will be like by the time I’ve had the rest.  I walked miles yesterday, and the more beautiful it was the more I missed you.  What’s the good of having all this loveliness by oneself?  I want somebody with me to see it and feel it too.  If you were here how happy we should be!

I wish you knew Herr von Inster, for I know you’d like him.  I do think he’s unusual, and you like unusual people.  I had a letter from him today, sent with a book he thought I’d like, but I’ve read it,—­it is Selma Lagerlof’s Jerusalem; do you remember our reading it together that Easter in Cornwall?  But wasn’t it very charming of him to send it?  He says he is coming this way the end of the week and will call on me and renew his acquaintance with the Oberforster, with whom he says he has gone shooting sometimes when he has been staying at Koseritz.  His Christian name is Bernd.  Doesn’t it sound nice and honest.

I suppose by the end of the week he means Saturday, which is a very long way off.  Saturdays used to seem to come rushing on to the very heels of Mondays in Berlin when I was busy working.  Little mother, you can take it from me, from your wise, smug daughter, that work is the key to every happiness.  Without it happiness won’t come unlocked.  What do people do who don’t do anything, I wonder?

Koseritz is only five miles away, and as he’ll stay there, I suppose, with his relations, he won’t have very far to come.  He’ll ride over, I expect.  He looks so nice on a horse.  I saw him once in the Thiergarten, riding.  I’d love to ride on these forest roads,—­the sandy ones are perfect for riding; but when I asked the Oberforster today, after I got Herr von Inster’s letter, whether he could lend me a horse while I was here, what do you think I found out?  That Kloster, suspecting I might want to ride, had written him instructions on no account to allow me to.  Because I might tumble off, if you please, and sprain either of my precious wrists.  Did you ever.  I believe Kloster regards me only as a vessel for carrying about music to other people, not as a human being at all.  It is like the way jockeys are kept, strict and watched, before a race.

Frau Bornsted gazed at me with her large serious eyes, and said, “Do you play the violin, then, so well?”

“No,” I snapped.  “I don’t.”  And I drummed with my fingers on the windowpane and felt as rebellious as six years old.

But of course I’m going to be good.  I won’t do anything that may delay my getting home to you.