"Naughty girl!" said the R.H.F. "You haven't made the most of your opportunities. Don't you know what they call girls who come out for the cold weather?"
I said I didn't.
"They are called 'The Fishing Fleet,'" she said sweetly.
I said "Oh," because I didn't know what else to say, feeling as I did so remiss.
I have heard—Mr. Townley told me—that long ago when a ship from England arrived in the Hoogly a cannon was fired, and all the gay bachelors left their offices and went to the docks to appraise the new arrivals. A ball was given on board on the night of arrival, and many of the girls were engaged before they left the ship. I don't object to that. It was a fine, sincere way of doing things; but why the subject of marriage should be made an occasion for archness, for sly looks, for—in extreme cases—nudgings, passes my comprehension.
The R.H.F. has a way of making common any subject she touches—even the Taj and marriage—so I thought I would go to bed. As I said goodnight I regarded attentively the friend, wondering much how anyone could, of choice, accompany the R.H.F. in her journeyings. She is a very silent person, large and fat and about forty, and her eyes are small out of all proportion to her face, but they twinkled at me in such an understanding way that I, generally so chary of offering embraces, went up to kiss her. She is kind, but so large that being kissed by her is almost as destroying as being in a railway accident!
Do I ignore what you say in your letter? You see, it is rather difficult. Writing to a friend in a far country is like shouting through a speaking-tube to the moon, and one can't shout very intimate things, can one?
Let us be sensible. Don't be angry, but are you quite sure you really care, and is it wise to care? We are so very different. You are so very English, and I, in spite of a pink and fluffy exterior, am at heart as bitter and dour and prejudiced as any Covenanter that ever whined a psalm. My mind could never have anything but a Scots accent. You are reserved, and rather cold; I am expansive to a fault. You are terrifyingly clever; my intelligence is of the feeblest. You have a refined sense of humour; the poorest, most obvious joke is good enough for me. But this is only talk. I don't know that I am "in love,"—I don't like the expression anyway,—but this I know, that if you were not in the world it would be an unpeopled waste to me. The place you happen to be in is where all interest centres. Every minute of the time as I go through my days, laughing, talking, enjoying myself vastly, away at the back of my mind the thought of you lies "hidden yet bright," making for me a new heaven and a new earth. Is this caring? Is this what you want to hear me say? I can't write what I would like, I can't weave pretty things, I can only speak straight on, but oh, my dear, I am so glad that in this big, confusing world we have found each other. Poor Rocking Horse Fly! poor fat friend! how dull for them, how dull for all the rest of the people in the world not to have a you!
I am not going to write any more, not because I haven't lots to say, but because writing much or talking much about a thing—being queer and Scots, it is hard for me to say love—seems somehow to cheapen it, profane it.
I have opened this just to say again, My dear, my dear!