e out of Nan-nan, some day behind my
back, I wonder? There is one I shall forbid her to reveal: it shall be
part of my marriage-portion to show you early that you have got a wife
with a temper!

Here is a whole letter that must end now,--and the great Word never
mentioned! It is good for you to be put upon _maigre_ fare, for once. I
ho_l_d my pen back with b_o_th hands: it wants so much to gi_v_e you
the forbidd_e_n treat. Oh, the serpent in the garden! See where it has
underlined its meaning. Frailty, thy pen is a J pen!

Adieu, adieu, remember me.

LETTER XIII.

The letters? No, Beloved, I could not! Not yet. There you have caught me
where I own I am still shy of you.

A long time hence, when we are a safely wedded pair, you shall turn them
over. It _may_ be a short time; but I will keep them however long. Indeed
I must ever keep them; they talk to me of the dawn of my existence,--the
early light before our sun rose, when my love of you was growing and had
not yet reached its full.

If I disappoint you I will try to make up for it with something I wrote
long before I ever saw you. To-day I was turning over old things my mother
had treasured for me of my childhood--of days spent with her: things of
laughter as well as of tears; such a dear selection, so quaint and sweet,
with moods of her as I dimly remember her to have been. And among them was
this absurdity, written, and I suppose placed in the mouth of my stocking,
the Christmas I stayed with her in France. I remember the time as a great
treat, but nothing of this. "Nilgoes" is "Nicholas," you must understand!
How he must have laughed over me asleep while he read this!

"Cher pere Nilgoes. S'il vous plait voulez vous me donne
plus de jeux que des oranges des pommes et des pombons parc
que nous allons faire l'arbre de noel cette anne et les
jeaux ferait mieux pour l'arbre de Noel. Il ne faut pas dire
a petite mere s'il vous plait parce que je ne veut pas
quelle sache sil vous voulez venir ce soir du ceil pour que
vous pouvez me donner ce que je vous demande Dites bon jour
a la St. Viearge est a l'enfant Jeuses et a Ste Joseph.
Adieu cher St. Nilgoes."

I haven't altered the spelling, I love it too well, prophetic of a fault
I still carry about me. How strange that little bit of invocation to the
dear folk above sounds to me now! My mother must have been teaching me
things after her own persuasion; most na