rds and observed that 'at last he had seen you!' 'Virgilium
tantum vidi!'

As to the thing which you try to say in the first page of this letter,
and which you 'stop' yourself in saying ... _I_ need not stop you in
it....

And now there is no time, if I am to sleep to-night. May God bless
you, dearest, dearest.

I must be your own while He blesses _me_.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Friday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]

Here is my Ba's dearest _first_ letter come four hours after the
second, with '_Mis-sent to Mitcham_' written on its face as a
reason,--one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I _do_ have
it at last--what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the
first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!

Let me write to-morrow, sweet? I am quite well and sure to mind all
you bid me. I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are
the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White--I go for
_him_) if even that--for to-morrow night I must go out again, I
fear--to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.'s
_soiree_ at Lord Northampton's. And then comes Monday--and to-night
any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch.
(N.B.--should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant
Extracts'--mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when
walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we
found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a
ditch--'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the
king'--he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).

As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly
things. One remembers Regan's 'Oh Heaven--so you will rail at _me_,
when you are in the mood.' But what a want of self-respect such
judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect
is: 'So I believed yesterday, and _so_ now--and yet am neither hasty,
nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent'--what then?

--But I will say more of my mind--(not of that)--to-morrow, for time
presses a little--so bless you my ever ever dearest--I love you
wholly.

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 21, 1846.]

As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I s