I suppose because she knows
that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. There is a _de haut en
bas_ tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay one's finger upon
it but Ernest never gets a letter from her without feeling that he is
being written to by one who has had direct communication with an angel.
"What an awful creature," he once said to me, "that angel must have been
if it had anything to do with making Charlotte what she is."

"Could you like," she wrote to him not long ago, "the thoughts of a
little sea change here? The top of the cliffs will soon be bright with
heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I should think
begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and heather or no
heather--the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come your room shall
be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. Nineteen and
sixpence is the price of a return-ticket which covers a month. Would you
decide just as you would yourself like, only if you come we would hope to
try and make it bright for you; but you must not feel it a burden on your
mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction."

"When I have a bad nightmare," said Ernest to me, laughing as he showed
me this letter, "I dream that I have got to stay with Charlotte."

Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe it
is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real literary power
than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much
as to say, "There now--don't you think you are the only one of us who can
write; read this! And if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing
for your next book, you can make what use of it you like." I daresay she
writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words
"hope," "think," "feel," "try," "bright," and "little," and can hardly
write a page without introducing all these words and some of them more
than once. All this has the effect of making her style monotonous.

Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late years
has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. He finds
it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble through getting
into the key of C sharp after beginning in the key of C and being unable
to get back again.

"Getting into the key of C sharp," he said, "is like an unprotected
female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself at