_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
My own dearest, if you _do_--(for I confess to nothing of the kind),
but if you _should_ detect an unwillingness to write at certain times,
what would that prove,--I mean, what that one need shrink from
avowing? If I never had you before me except when writing letters to
you--then! Why, we do not even _talk_ much now! witness Mr. Buckingham
and his voyage that ought to have been discussed!--Oh, how coldly I
should write,--how the bleak-looking paper would seem unpropitious to
carry my feeling--if all had to begin and try to find words _this_
way!
Now, this morning I have been out--to town and back--and for all the
walking my head aches--and I have the conviction that presently when I
resign myself to think of you wholly, with only the pretext,--the
make-believe of occupation, in the shape of some book to turn over the
leaves of,--I shall see you and soon be well; so soon! You must know,
there is a chair (one of the kind called gond_ó_la-chairs by
upholsterers--with an emphasized o)--which occupies the precise place,
stands just in the same relation to this chair I sit on now, that
yours stands in and occupies--to the left of the fire: and, how often,
how _always_ I turn in the dusk and _see_ the dearest real Ba with me.
How entirely kind to take that trouble, give those sittings for me! Do
you think the kindness has missed its due effect? _No, no_, I am
glad,--(_knowing what I_ now _know_,--what you meant _should be_, and
did all in your power to prevent) that I have _not_ received the
picture, if anything short of an adequate likeness. 'Nil nisi--te!'
But I have set my heart on _seeing_ it--will you remember next time,
next Saturday?
I will leave off now. To-morrow, dearest, only dearest Ba, I will
write a longer letter--the clock stops it this afternoon--it is later
than I thought, and our poor crazy post! This morning, hoping against
hope, I ran to meet our postman coming meditatively up the lane--with
_a_ letter, indeed!--but Ba's will come to-night--and I will be happy,
already _am_ happy, expecting it. Bless you, my own love,