st as busy and as happy as ourselves at La
Terrasse. As to Graham, his professional connection extends daily: he
is so much sought after, so much engaged, that I tell him he will grow
quite conceited. Like a right good mother, as I am, I do my best to
keep him down: no flattery does he get from me, as you know. And yet,
Lucy, he is a fine fellow: his mother's heart dances at the sight of
him. After being hurried here and there the whole day, and passing the
ordeal of fifty sorts of tempers, and combating a hundred caprices, and
sometimes witnessing cruel sufferings--perhaps, occasionally, as I tell
him, inflicting them--at night he still comes home to me in such
kindly, pleasant mood, that really, I seem to live in a sort of moral
antipodes, and on these January evenings my day rises when other
people's night sets in.

"Still he needs keeping in order, and correcting, and repressing, and I
do him that good service; but the boy is so elastic there is no such
thing as vexing him thoroughly. When I think I have at last driven him
to the sullens, he turns on me with jokes for retaliation: but you know
him and all his iniquities, and I am but an elderly simpleton to make
him the subject of this epistle.

"As for me, I have had my old Bretton agent here on a visit, and have
been plunged overhead and ears in business matters. I do so wish to
regain for Graham at least some part of what his father left him. He
laughs to scorn my anxiety on this point, bidding me look and see how
he can provide for himself and me too, and asking what the old lady can
possibly want that she has not; hinting about sky-blue turbans;
accusing me of an ambition to wear diamonds, keep livery servants, have
an hotel, and lead the fashion amongst the English clan in Villette.

"Talking of sky-blue turbans, I wish you had been with us the other
evening. He had come in really tired, and after I had given him his
tea, he threw himself into my chair with his customary presumption. To
my great delight, he dropped asleep. (You know how he teases me about
being drowsy; I, who never, by any chance, close an eye by daylight.)
While he slept, I thought he looked very bonny, Lucy: fool as I am to
be so proud of him; but who can help it? Show me his peer. Look where I
will, I see nothing like him in Villette. Well, I took it into my head
to play him a trick: so I brought out the sky-blue turban, and handling
it with gingerly precaution, I managed to invest his br