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Page 9
LETTER XII.
Dearest: It has been such a funny day from post-time onwards:--
congratulations on the great event are beginning to arrive in envelopes
and on wheels. Some are very kind and dear; and some are not so--only the
ordinary seemliness of polite sniffle-snaffle. Just after you had gone
yesterday, Mrs. ---- called and was told the news. Of course she knew _of_
you: but didn't think she had ever seen you. "Probably he passed you at
the gates," I said. "What?" she went off with a view-hallo; "that
well-dressed sort of young fellow in gray, and a mustache, and knowing how
to ride? Met us in the lane. _Well_, my dear, I _do_ congratulate you!"
And whether it was by the gray suit, or the mustache, or the knowing how
to ride that her congratulations were so emphatically secured, I know not!
Others are yet more quaint, and more to my liking. Nan-nan is Nan-nan: I
cannot let you off what she said! No tears or sentiment came from her
to prevent me laughing: she brisked like an old war-horse at the first
word of it, and blessed God that it had come betimes, that she might be
a nurse again in her old age! She is a true "Mrs. Berry," and is ready
to make room for you in my affections for the sake of far-off divine
events, which promise renewed youth to her old bones.
Roberts, when he brought me my pony this morning, touched his hat quick
twice over to show that the news brimmed in his body: and a very nice
cordial way of showing, I thought it! He was quite ready to talk when I
let him go; and he gave me plenty of good fun. He used to know you when
he was in service at the H----s, and speaks of you as being then "a
gallous young hound," whatever that may mean. I imagine "gallous" to be
a rustic Lewis Carroll compound, made up in equal parts of callousness
and gallantry, which most boys are, at some stage of their existence.
What tales will you be getting of me out of Nan-nan, some day behind my
back, I wonder? There is one I shall forbid her to reveal: it shall be
part of my marriage-portion to show you early that you have got a wife
with a temper!
Here is a whole letter that must end now,--and the great Word never
mentioned! It is good for you to be put upon _maigre_ fare, for once. I
ho_l_d my pen back with b_o_th hands: it wants so much to gi_v_e you
the forbidd_e_n treat. Oh, the serpent in the garden! See where it has
underlined its meaning. Frailty, thy pen is a J pen!
Adieu, adieu, remember me.
LETTER XIII.
The letters? No, Beloved, I could not! Not yet. There you have caught me
where I own I am still shy of you.
A long time hence, when we are a safely wedded pair, you shall turn them
over. It _may_ be a short time; but I will keep them however long. Indeed
I must ever keep them; they talk to me of the dawn of my existence,--the
early light before our sun rose, when my love of you was growing and had
not yet reached its full.
If I disappoint you I will try to make up for it with something I wrote
long before I ever saw you. To-day I was turning over old things my mother
had treasured for me of my childhood--of days spent with her: things of
laughter as well as of tears; such a dear selection, so quaint and sweet,
with moods of her as I dimly remember her to have been. And among them was
this absurdity, written, and I suppose placed in the mouth of my stocking,
the Christmas I stayed with her in France. I remember the time as a great
treat, but nothing of this. "Nilgoes" is "Nicholas," you must understand!
How he must have laughed over me asleep while he read this!
"Cher p�re Nilgoes. S'il vous plait voulez vous me donn�
plus de jeux que des oranges des pommes et des pombons parc
que nous allons faire l'arbre de noel cette ann� et les
jeaux ferait mieux pour l'arbre de Noel. Il ne faut pas dire
� petite mere s'il vous plait parce que je ne veut pas
quelle sache sil vous voulez venir ce soir du ceil pour que
vous pouvez me donner ce que je vous demande Dites bon jour
� la St. Viearge est � l'enfant Jeuses et � Ste Joseph.
Adieu cher St. Nilgoes."
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