I am indeed most thankful you are well again, though I never looked on that deafness very seriously; but if you like hearing watches tick, and boots creak, and plates clatter, so be it to you, for many and [Pg 76] many a year to come. I think I should so like to be deaf, mostly, not expected to answer anybody in society, never startled by a bang, never tortured by a railroad whistle, never hearing the nasty cicadas in Italy, nor a child cry, nor an owl. Nothing but a nice whisper into my ear, by a pretty girl. Ah well, I'm very glad I can chatter to you with my weak voice, to my heart's content; and you must come and see me soon now. All that you say of "Proserpina" is joyful to me. What a Susie you are, drawing like that! and I'm sure you know Latin better than I do.
I am better, but not right yet. There is no fear of sore throat, I think, but some of prolonged tooth worry. It is more stomachic than coldic, I believe, and those tea cakes are too crisply seductive! What can it be, that subtle treachery that lurks in tea cakes, and is wholly absent in the rude honesty of toast?
The metaphysical effect of tea cake last night was, that I had a perilous and weary journey in a desert, in which I had to dodge hostile tribes round the corners of pyramids.
A very sad letter from Joanie tells me she was going to Scotland last night, at which I am not only very sorry but very cross.
A chirping cricket on the hearth advises me to keep my heart up.
Your happy letters (with the sympathetic misery of complaint of dark days) have cheered me as much as anything could do.
The sight of one of my poor "Companions of St. George," who has sent me, not a widow's but a parlor-maid's (an old school-mistress) "all her living," and whom I found last night, dying, slowly and quietly, in a damp room, just the size of your study (which her landlord won't mend the roof of), by the light of a single tallow candle—dying, I [Pg 77] say, slowly, of consumption, not yet near the end, but contemplating it with sorrow, mixed partly with fear, lest she should not have done all she could for her children!
The sight of all this and my own shameful comforts, three wax candles and blazing fire and dry roof, and Susie and Joanie for friends!