I am going to propose to you to give up Tuesday, and to take your choice of two or three other days, say Friday, or Saturday, or to-morrow ...  Monday.  Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and talked of leaving London on Friday, and of visiting me again on ‘Tuesday’ ... he said, ... but that is an uncertainty, and it may be Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday.  So I thought (wrong or right) that out of the three remaining days you would not mind choosing one.  And if you do choose the Monday, there will be no need to write—­nor time indeed—­; but if the Friday or Saturday, I shall hear from you, perhaps.  Above all things remember, my dear friend, that I shall not expect you to-morrow, except as by a bare possibility.  In great haste, signed and sealed this Sunday evening by

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday, 7 P.M.
[Post-mark, August 19, 1845.]

I this moment get your note—­having been out since the early morning—­and I must write just to catch the post.  You are pure kindness and considerateness, no thanks to you!—­(since you will have it so—­).  I choose Friday, then,—­but I shall hear from you before Thursday, I dare hope?  I have all but passed your house to-day—­with an Italian friend, from Rome, whom I must go about with a little on weariful sight seeing, so I shall earn Friday.

Bless you

R.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]

I fancied it was just so—­as I did not hear and did not see you on Monday.  Not that you were expected particularly—­but that you would have written your own negative, it appeared to me, by some post in the day, if you had received my note in time.  It happened well too, altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases, go and spend my solitude on the park a little.  Flush wags his tail at that proposition when I speak it loud out.  And I am to write to you before Friday, and so, am writing, you see ... which I should not, should not have done if I had not been told; because it is not my turn to write, ... did you think it was?

Not a word of Malta! except from Mr. Kenyon who talked homilies of it last Sunday and wanted to speak them to Papa—­but it would not do in any way—­now especially—­and in a little time there will be a decision for or against; and I am afraid of both ... which is a happy state of preparation.  Did I not tell you that early in the summer I did some translations for Miss Thomson’s ‘Classical Album,’ from Bion and Theocritus, and Nonnus the author of that large (not great) poem in some forty books of the ‘Dionysiaca’ ... and the paraphrases from Apuleius?  Well—­I had a letter from her the other day, full of compunction