Thank you, thank you—­I will devise titles—­I quite see what you say, now you do say it.  I am (this Monday morning, the prescribed day for efforts and beginnings) looking over and correcting what you read—­to press they shall go, and then the plays can follow gently, and then ...  ’Oh to be in Pisa.  Now that E.B.B. is there!’—­And I shall be there!...  I am much better to-day; and my mother better—­and to-morrow I shall see you—­So come good things together!

Dearest—­till to-morrow and ever I am yours, wholly yours—­May God bless you!

R.B.

You do not ask me that ’boon’—­why is that?—­Besides, I have my own real boons to ask too, as you will inevitably find, and I shall perhaps get heart by your example.

E.B.B. to R.B.

[Post-mark, October 7, 1845.]

Ah but the good things do not come together—­for just as your letter comes I am driven to asking you to leave Tuesday for Wednesday.

On Tuesday Mr. Kenyon is to be here or not to be here, he says—­there’s a doubt; and you would rather go to a clear day.  So if you do not hear from me again I shall expect you on Wednesday unless I hear to the contrary from you:—­and if anything happens to Wednesday you shall hear.  Mr. Kenyon is in town for only two days, or three.  I never could grumble against him, so good and kind as he is—­but he may not come after all to-morrow—­so it is not grudging the obolus to Belisarius, but the squandering of the last golden days at the bottom of the purse.

Do I ’stand’—­Do I walk?  Yes—­most uprightly.  I ’walk upright every day.’  Do I go out? no, never.  And I am not to be scolded for that, because when you were looking at the sun to-day, I was marking the east wind; and perhaps if I had breathed a breath of it ... farewell Pisa.  People who can walk don’t always walk into the lion’s den as a consequence—­do they? should they?  Are you ‘sure that they should?’ I write in great haste.  So Wednesday then ... perhaps!

And yours every day.

You understand.  Wednesday—­if nothing to the contrary.

R.B. to E.B.B.

12—­Wednesday.
[Post-mark, October 8, 1845.]

Well, dearest, at all events I get up with the assurance I shall see you, and go on till the fatal 11-1/4 p.m. believing in the same, and then, if after all there does come such a note as this with its instructions, why, first, it is such a note and such a gain, and next it makes a great day out of to-morrow that was to have been so little of a day, that is all.  Only, only, I am suspicious, now, of a real loss to me in the end; for, putting off yesterday, I dared put off (on your part) Friday to Saturday ... while now ... what shall be said to that?

Dear Mr. Kenyon to be the smiling inconscious obstacle to any pleasure of mine, if it were merely pleasure!

But I want to catch our next post—­to-morrow, then, excepting what is to be excepted!