nder. She is divinely
innocent, but roguishness saves her from insipidity. Her looks? She
looks as you would imagine a person might look who possessed these
graces; and she is worth looking at, though every time I do it I have a
rush of love to the head. When you find a girl who combines all the
qualities you have imagined in the ideal, and who has added a dozen or
two on her own account, merely to distract you past all hope, why stand
up and try to resist her charm? Down on your knees like a man, say I!

* * * * *

I'm getting to adore Aunt Celia. I didn't care for her at first, but she
is so deliciously blind. Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a
chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble
of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he
could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too
greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn
unexpectedly and rend me. I always remember that inscription on the
backs of the little mechanical French toys: 'Quoiqu'elle soit tres
solidement montee, il faut ne pas brutaliser la machine.'

And so my courtship progresses under Aunt Celia's very nose. I say
'progresses'; but it is impossible to speak with any certainty of
courting, for the essence of that gentle craft is hope, rooted in labour
and trained by love.

[Illustration: She ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers]

I set out to propose to her during service this afternoon by writing my
feelings on the flyleaf of the hymn-book, or something like that; but I
knew that Aunt Celia would never forgive such blasphemy, and I thought
that Kitty herself might consider it wicked. Besides, if she should
chance to accept me, there was nothing I could do in a cathedral to
relieve my feelings. No; if she ever accepts me, I wish it to be in a
large, vacant spot of the universe, peopled by two only, and those two
so indistinguishably blended, as it were, that they would appear as one
to the casual observer. So I practised repression, though the wall of my
reserve is worn to the thinness of thread-paper, and I tried to keep my
mind on the droning minor canon, and not to look at her, 'for that way
madness lies.'

* * * * *

_She_

York, _June 28_,
High Petergate Street.

My taste is so bad! I just begin to realize it, and I am feeling my
'growing pains,' lik