every time! That you are a
sportsman is one of the very hardest things in life that I have to bear.

Last night Peterkins came up with me to keep guard against any further
intrusion of mice. I put her to sleep on the couch: but she discarded
the red shawl I had prepared for her at the bottom, and lay at the top
most uncomfortably in a parcel of millinery into which from one end I
had already made excavations, so that it formed a large bag. Into the
further end of this bag Turks crept and snuggled down: but every time
she turned in the night (and it seemed very often) the brown paper
crackled and woke me up. So at last I took it up and shook out its
contents; and Pippins slept soundly on red flannel till Nan-nan brought
the tea.

You will notice that in this small narrative Peterkins gets three names:
it is a fashion that runs through the household, beginning with the
Mother-Aunt, who on some days speaks of Nan-nan as "the old lady," and
sometimes as "that girl," all according to the two tempers she has about
Nan-nan's privileged position in regard to me.

You were only here yesterday, and already I want you again so much, so
much!

Your never satisfied but always loving.

LETTER V.

Most Beloved: I have been thinking, staring at this blank piece of paper,
and wondering how _there_ am I ever to say what I have in me here--not
wishing to say anything at all, but just to be! I feel that I am living
now only because you love me: and that my life will have run out, like
this penful of ink, when that use in me is past. Not yet, Beloved, oh, not
yet! Nothing is finished that we have to do and be:--hardly begun! I will
not call even this "midsummer," however much it seems so: it is still only
spring.

Every day your love binds me more deeply than I knew the day before: so
that no day is the same now, but each one a little happier than the last.
My own, you are my very own! And yet, true as that is, it is not so true
as that I am _your_ own. It is less absolute, I mean; and must be so,
because I cannot very well _take_ possession of anything when I am given
over heart and soul out of my own possession: there isn't enough identity
left in me, I am yours so much, so much! All this is useless to say, yet
what can I say else, if I have to begin saying anything?

Could I truly be your "star and goddess," as you call me, Beloved, I
would do you the service of Thetis at least (who did it for a greater
than hersel