_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]
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
_soirée_ 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.