But he clasped my arm very tenderly, and exclaimed with a look of deep pain, "For God's sake do not speak of such things, my love. Even in jest the words make me feel faint and sick."
Poor Eustace! I fear he is not well; and that what he has found at St. Salvat's is eating into his spirits.
November 15, 1772.
I have been feeling doubtful, for some days past, whether to send my diary regularly to my mother, lest she should be distressed (at that great distance) by my account of this place and our life here. Yet I felt as if something had suddenly happened, a window suddenly closed or a door slammed in my face, when Eustace begged me to-day to be very reserved in anything I wrote in my letters.
"These country postmasters," he said, not without hesitation, "are not to be trusted with any secrets; they are known to amuse their leisure and entertain their gossips with the letters which pass through their hands." He laughed, but not very naturally. "Some day," he said, "I will be sending a special messenger to Cardiff, and then your diary—for I know that you are keeping one—shall go to your mother. But for the present I would not say more than needful about ... about our surroundings, my dear Penelope."
I felt childishly vexed.
"'Tis that hateful Uncle Hubert;" I cried, "that reads our letters, Eustace! I feel sure of it!"
"Nonsense," answered Eustace. "I tell you that it is a well-known habit among postmasters and postmistresses in this country," and he went away a little displeased, as I thought.
My poor journal! And yet I shall continue writing it, and perhaps even more frankly now it will be read only by me; for while I write I seem to be talking to my dearest mother, and to be a little less solitary....