best I may, as it comes to me. But I have a woman's hatred of pity: my
cousins have long accorded me a contemptuous pity for being an old maid. I
laughed their pity to scorn while I had Esther Hooper. What more did I
need? We could enact over again the sweet old life of the Ladies of
Llangollen.

We had planned our lives a thousand times. Poor we both were, yet we would
put something away every year for our old age, and work cheerily on until
we could work no more, then creep to our nest like a couple of old
kittens, and cuddle down by our warm, pleasant fire--together, and
therefore content. Well, you see it was not to be: she had grown
affrighted, I suppose, at the thought of all that weary life with only me,
and has married a man who outrages all her delicate instincts and
traditions of an accordant husband. But why speak of him? He supports her,
and she has escaped the obloquy of old-maidism. She has married a
maintenance. She says she loves him, so of course she does.

For myself, my health, which has always been very rugged, has failed me
utterly this last year; but as my bread depends upon my ability to endure
daily and constant fatigue, I have forced myself to endeavor to get up the
amount of strength required for my winter's work by the present
expedition, planned for me by a friend. Bah! what do I talk of friendship
for? An old lady who was once a teacher in the school from which my father
had married my mother, and who, I think, had cared with more than
friendship for him, has in these last few years fallen heir to a small
property--not a very great deal, but enough to enable her to live in
comfort, and exercise her kindly heart in deeds of charity occasionally.
She has chosen for years to occupy rooms beneath my own, and has always
been a sort of mother to me. Most of the pretty things that have fallen
into my life, and most of its pleasures, have come to me through her. She
has many troublesome faults, as we all have, but she is old, and I have
always had Esther to talk them over and laugh them off with, so have borne
them easily. This year, because she saw I was dying, she took me with her
to the mountains of Vermont, and I have got a new lease of life, and new
capacities for suffering as well.

On our way back she was suddenly attacked with the illness which detained
us at this Boston hotel. Here your accident laid you up, and the rest came
as I have told.

You have married me to rid yourself of a uni