hat he could not
see faces in a nutshell; and I suppose others cannot: only I.

He, too, is gone. If you had been coming he would have spared another
day--for to-day _was_ planned and dated, you will remember--and we would
have ridden halfway to meet you. But, as fate has tripped you, and made
all comings on your part indefinite, he sends you his hopes for a later
meeting.

How is your poor foot? I suppose, as it is ill, I may send it a kiss by
post and wish it well? I do. Truly, you are to let me know if it gives
you much pain, and I will lie awake thinking of you. This is not
sentimental, for if one knows that a friend is occupied over one's
sleeplessness one feels the comfort.

I am perplexed how else to give you my company: your mother, I know,
could not yet truly welcome me; and I wish to be as patient as possible,
and not push for favors that are not offered. So I cannot come and ask
to take you out in _her_ carriage, nor come and carry you away in mine.
We must try how fast we can hold hands at a distance.

I have kept up to where you have been reading in "Richard Feverel,"
though it has been a scramble: for I have less opportunity of reading, I
with my feet, than you without yours. In _your_ book I have just got to
the smuggling away of General Monk in the perforated coffin, and my
sense of history capitulates in an abandonment of laughter. I yield! The
Gaul's invasion of Britain always becomes broad farce when he attempts
it. This in clever ludicrousness beats the unintentional comedy of
Victor Hugo's "John-Jim-Jack" as a name typical of Anglo-Saxon
christenings. But Dumas, through a dozen absurdities, knows apparently
how to stalk his quarry: so large a genius may play the fool and remain
wise.

You see I have given your author a warm welcome at last: and what about
you and mine? Tell me you love his women and I will not be jealous.
Indeed, outside him I don't know where to find a written English woman
of modern times whom I would care to meet, or could feel honestly bound
to look up to:--nowhere will I have her shaking her ringlets at me in
Dickens or Thackeray. Scott is simply not modern; and Hardy's women, if
they have nobility in them, get so cruelly broken on the wheel that you
get but the wrecks of them at last. It is only his charming baggages who
come to a good ending.

I like an author who has the courage and self-restraint to leave his noble
creations alive: too many try to ennoble them by dea