y love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I
could not have said even if I had seen him.

Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again? Don't think we do
not think of the hope you left us. Because we do indeed.

A note from papa has brought the comforting news that my dear, dear
Stormie is in England again, in London, and looking perfectly well. It
is a mercy which makes me very thankful, and would make me joyful if
anything could. But the meanings of some words change as we live on.
Papa's note is hurried. It was a sixty-day passage, and that is all he
tells me. Yes--there is something besides about Sette and Occy being
either unknown or misknown, through the fault of their growing. Papa
is not near returning, I think. He has so much to do and see, and so
much cause to be enlivened and renewed as to spirits, that I begged
him not to think about me and stay away as long as he pleased. And the
accounts of him and of all at home are satisfying, I thank God....

There is an east wind just now, which I feel. Nevertheless, Dr. Scully
has said, a few minutes since, that I am as well as he could hope,
considering the season.

May God bless you ever!
Your gratefully attached
BA.

_To Mrs. Martin_
March 29, 1841.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Have you thought 'The dream has come true'?
I mean the dream of the flowers which you pulled for me and I wouldn't
look at, even? I fear you must have thought that the dream about my
ingratitude has come true.

And yet it has not. Dearest Mrs. Martin, it has _not_. I have not
forgotten you or remembered you less affectionately through all the
silence, or longed less for the letters I did not ask for. But the
truth is, my faculties seem to hang heavily now, like flappers when
the spring is broken. _My_ spring _is_ broken, and a separate exertion
is necessary for the lifting up of each--and then it falls down again.
I never felt so before: there is no wonder that I should feel so now.
Nevertheless, I don't give up much to the pernicious languor--the
tendency to lie down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey--I
don't give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the root of
certain negligences--for instance, of this toward _you_.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, receive my sympathy, _our_ sympathy, in the
anxiety you have lately felt so painfully, and in the rejoicing for
its happy issue. Do say when you write (I take for granted, you see,
that you will write) how Mrs. B---- is now--b