Here is my Ba’s dearest first letter come four hours after the second, with ‘Mis-sent to Mitcham’ written on its face as a reason,—­one more proof of the negligence of somebody!  But I do have it at last—­what should I say? what do you expect me to say?  And the first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!

Let me write to-morrow, sweet?  I am quite well and sure to mind all you bid me.  I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White—­I go for him) if even that—­for to-morrow night I must go out again, I fear—­to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.’s soiree at Lord Northampton’s.  And then comes Monday—­and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch.  (N.B.—­should you meditate really an addition to the ’Elegant Extracts’—­mind this last joke is none of mine but my father’s; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch—­’to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the king’—­he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).

As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly things.  One remembers Regan’s ’Oh Heaven—­so you will rail at me, when you are in the mood.’  But what a want of self-respect such judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect is:  ’So I believed yesterday, and so now—­and yet am neither hasty, nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent’—­what then?

—­But I will say more of my mind—­(not of that)—­to-morrow, for time presses a little—­so bless you my ever ever dearest—­I love you wholly.

R.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 21, 1846.]

As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I see nobody else in the evening, I never heard till just now and from Papa himself, that ‘George was invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter.’  How surprised you will be.  It must have been a sudden thought of Mr. Kenyon’s.

And I have been thinking, thinking since last night that I wrote you then a letter all but ... insolent ... which, do you know, I feel half ashamed to look back upon this morning—­particularly what I wrote about ’missions of humanity’—­now was it not insolent of me to write so?  If I could take my letter again I would dip it into Lethe between the lilies, instead of the post office:—­but I can’t—­so if you wondered, you must forget as far as possible, and understand how it was, and that I was in brimming spirits when I wrote, from two causes ... first, because I had your letter which was a pure goodness of yours, and secondly because you were ‘noticeably’ better you said, or ‘noticeably well’ rather, to mind my quotations.  So I wrote what I wrote, and gave it to Arabel when she came in at midnight, to give