e to tell me
that you did not want me; and I got myself into such an
ecstatic state of mock melancholy that I cried for half an
hour. But when one has such a real living joy at the back
of one's romantic melancholy, tears are very pleasant;--
they water and do not burn.

I must tell you about them all at Killaloe. They certainly
are very unhappy at the idea of your resigning. Your
father says very little, but I made him own that to act
as you are acting for the sake of principle is very grand.
I would not leave him till he had said so, and he did say
it. Dear Mrs. Finn does not understand it as well, but
she will do so. She complains mostly for my sake, and
when I tell her that I will wait twenty years if it is
necessary, she tells me I do not know what waiting means.
But I will,--and will be happy, and will never really
think myself a Mariana. Dear, dear, dear Phineas, indeed
I won't. The girls are half sad and half proud. But I am
wholly proud, and know that you are doing just what you
ought to do. I shall think more of you as a man who might
have been a Prime Minister than if you were really sitting
in the Cabinet like Lord Cantrip. As for mamma, I cannot
make her quite understand it. She merely says that no
young man who is going to be married ought to resign
anything. Dear mamma;--sometimes she does say such odd
things.

You told me to tell you everything, and so I have. I
talk to some of the people here, and tell them what they
might do if they had tenant-right. One old fellow, Mike
Dufferty,--I don't know whether you remember him,--asked
if he would have to pay the rent all the same. When I said
certainly he would, then he shook his head. But as you
said once, when we want to do good to people one has no
right to expect that they should understand it. It is like
baptizing little infants.

I got both your notes;--seven words in one, Mr.
Under-Secretary, and nine in the other! But the one little
word at the end was worth a whole sheet full of common
words. How nice it is to write letters without paying
postage, and to send them about the world with a grand
name in the corner. When Barney brings me one he always
looks as if he didn't know whether it was a love letter
or an order to go to Botany Bay. If he saw the inside of
them, how short they are, I don't think he'd think much of