“There seems a good deal of business to be done. My father unfortunately is no better, so he cannot come down to Stoke Revel, and I shall probably return upon Wednesday morning. A poem of Browning’s runs in my head––something about three days––I can’t quote exactly.
“If my sister were writing this letter, she would say that I have been very hard to please, and uninterested in everything since I came home. Indeed it seems as if I were. London in this part of it, in hot weather, makes a man weary for green woods, a sliding river, and a Book of Verses underneath a Bough. Well, perhaps I shall have all of them by Wednesday afternoon. You will think I can do nothing but grumble. All the same, into what was the mere dull routine of uncongenial work before, your influence has come with a current of new energy; like the tide from the sea swelling up into the inland river.––I’m at it again! Rivers on the brain evidently.
“I hope meanwhile that Carnaby behaves himself, and is not too much of a bore, and that England,––England in spring at least, is gaining a corner in your heart? Your mother called it home, remember. Yes, do try to remember that!
“Did you go to the garden party? Did you 213 walk? Did you drive? Did you like it? Who was there? Were you dull?”
There was a postscript:––
“I have found the verse from Browning, ‘So I shall see her in three days.’
“M. L.”