Oh me, Susie, what is to become of me in the next world, who have in this life all my good things!
What a sweet, careful, tender letter this is! I re-inclose it at once for fear of mischief, though I've scarcely read, for indeed my eyes are weary, but I see what gentle mind it means.
Yes, you will love and rejoice in your Chaucer more and more. Fancy, I've never time, now, to look at him,—obliged to read even my Homer and Shakespeare at a scramble, half missing the sense,—the business of life disturbs one so.
Herne Hill
.
Here's your letter first thing in the morning, while I'm sipping my coffee in the midst of such confusion as I've not often achieved at my best. The little room, which I think is as nearly as possible the size [Pg 78] of your study, but with a lower roof, has to begin with—A, my bed; B, my basin stand; C, my table; D, my chest of drawers; thus arranged in relation to E, the window (which has still its dark bars to prevent the little boy getting out); F, the fireplace; G, the golden or mineralogical cupboard; and H, the grand entrance. The two dots with a back represent my chair, which is properly solid and not un-easy. Three others of lighter disposition find place somewhere about. These with the chimney-piece and drawer's head are covered, or rather heaped, with all they can carry, and the morning is just looking in, astonished to see what is expected of it, and smiling—(yes, I may fairly say it is smiling, for it is cloudless for its part above the smoke of the horizon line)—at Sarah's hope and mine, of ever getting that room into order by twelve o'clock. The chimney-piece with its bottles, spoons, lozenge boxes, matches, candlesticks, and letters jammed behind them, does appear to me entirely hopeless, and this the more because Sarah, [45] when I tell her to take a bottle away that has a mixture in it which I don't like, looks me full in the face, and says "she won't, because I may want it." I submit, because it is so nice to get Sarah to look one full in the face. She really is the prettiest, round faced, and round eyed girl I ever saw, and it's a great shame she should be a housemaid; only I wish she would take those bottles away. She says I'm looking better to-day, and I think I'm feeling a little bit more,—no, I mean, a little bit less demoniacal. But I still can do that jackdaw beautifully.