ROME, _23d May, 1874_.

A number of business letters and the increasing instinct for work here
as time shortens, have kept me too long from even writing a mere
mamma-note to you; though not without thought of you daily.

I have your last most lovely line about your sister--and giving me
that most touching fact about poor Dr. John Brown, which I am grieved
and yet thankful to know, that I may better still reverence his
unfailing kindness and quick sympathy. I have a quite wonderful letter
from him about you; but I will not tell you what he says, only it is
so _very_, very true, and so very, very pretty, you can't think.

I have written to my bookseller to find for you, and send a complete
edition of "Modern Painters," if findable. If not, I will make my
assistant send you down my own fourth and fifth volumes, which you can
keep till I come for them in the autumn.

There is nothing now in the year but autumn and winter. I really begin
to think there is some terrible change of climate coming upon the
world for its sin, like another deluge. It will have its rainbow, I
suppose, after its manner--promising not to darken the world again,
and then not to drown.

* * * * *

ROME, _24th May, 1874_ (_Whit-Sunday_).

I have to-day, to make the day whiter for me, your lovely letter of
the 15th,[8] telling me your age. I am so glad it is no more; you are
only thirteen years older than I, and much more able to be my sister
than mamma, and I hope you will have many years of youth yet. I think
I _must_ tell you in return for this letter what Dr. John Brown said,
or part of it at least. He said you had the playfulness of a lamb
without its selfishness. I think that perfect as far as it goes. Of
course my Susie's wise and grave gifts must be told of afterwards.
There is no one I know, or have known, so well able as you are to be
in a degree what my mother was to me. In this chief way (as well as
many other ways) (the puzzlement I have had to force that sentence
into grammar!), that I have had the same certainty of giving you
pleasure by a few words and by any little account of what I am doing.
But then you know I have just got out of the way of doing as I am bid,
and unless you can scold me back into that, you can't give me the
sense of support.

Tell me more about yourself first, and how those years came to be
"lost." I a