lame and fade again. A
word or two of kindness makes him rapturous; a harsh expression sinks
him to despair. As time goes on, the letters grow fewer, and the
writers grow more used to each other's ways. But to the last Steele's
affectionate nature takes fire upon the least encouragement. Once,
years afterwards, when Prue is in the country and he is in London, and
she calls him "Good Dick," it throws him into such a transport that he
declares he could forget his gout, and walk down to her at Wales. "My
dear little peevish, beautiful, wise Governess, God bless you," the
letter ends. In another he assures her that, lying in her place and on
her pillow, he fell into tears from thinking that his "charming little
insolent might be then awake and in pain" with headache. She wants
flattery, she says, and he flatters her. "Her son," he declares, "is
extremely pretty, and has his face sweetened with something of the
Venus his mother, which is no small delight to the Vulcan who begot
him." He assures her that, though she talks of the children, they are
dear to him more because they are hers than because they are his
own.[54] And this reminds us that some of the best of his later
letters are about his family. Once, at this time of their mother's
absence in Wales, he says that he has invited his eldest daughter to
dinner with one of her teachers, because she had represented to him
"in her pretty language that she seemed helpless and friendless,
without anybody's taking notice of her at Christmas, when all the
children but she and two more were with their relations." So now they
are in the room where he is writing. "I told Betty," he adds, "I had
writ to you; and she made me open the letter again, and give her
humble duty to her mother, and desire to know when she shall have the
honour to see her in town." No doubt this was in strict accordance
with the proprieties as practised at Mrs. Nazereau's polite academy in
Chelsea; but somehow one suspects that "Madam Betty" would scarcely
have addressed the writer of the letter with the same boarding-school
formality. Elsewhere the talk is all of Eugene, the eldest boy. "Your
son, at the present writing, is mighty well employed in tumbling on
the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a
most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a
very great scholar: he can read his Primer; and I have brought down my
Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks upon