secret.

Nobody doubts that she is to be my wife. Let her pass for such when I
give the word. 'Mean time reformation shall be my stalking-horse; some
one of the women in London, if I can get her hither, my bird.' And so
much for this time.

LETTER XIX

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE [IN ANSWER TO LETTERS IX. XV.]

Do not be so much concerned, my dearest friend, at the bickerings
between my mother and me. We love one another dearly notwithstanding.
If my mother had not me to find fault with, she must find fault with
somebody else. And as to me, I am a very saucy girl; and were not this
occasion, there would be some other, to shew it.

You have heard me say, that this was always the case between us.
You could not otherwise have known it. For when you was with us, you
harmonized us both; and, indeed, I was always more afraid of you than of
my mother. But then that awe is accompanied with love. Your reproofs,
as I have always found, are so charmingly mild and instructive; so
evidently calculated to improve, and not to provoke; that a generous
temper must be amended by them. But hear now, mind my good mamma, when
you are not with us--You shall, I tell you, Nancy. I will have it so.
Don't I know best, I won't be disobeyed. How can a daughter of spirits
bear such language; such looks too with the language; and not have a
longing mind to disobey?

Don't advise me, my dear, to subscribe to my mother's prohibition of
correspondence with you. She has no reason for it. Nor would she of her
own judgment have prohibited it. That odd old ambling soul your uncle,
(whose visits are frequenter than ever,) instigated by your malicious
and selfish brother and sister in the occasion. And they have only
borrowed my mother's lips, at the distance they are from you, for a sort
of speaking trumpet for them. The prohibition, once more I say, cannot
come from her heart: But if it did, is so much danger to be apprehended
from my continuing to write to one of my own sex, as if I wrote to one
of the other? Don't let dejection and disappointment, and the course
of oppression which you have run through, weaken your mind, my dearest
creature, and make you see inconveniencies where there possibly cannot
be any. If your talent is scribbling, as you call it; so is mine--and
I will scribble on, at all opportunities; and to you; let them say what
they will. Nor let your letters be filled with the self-accusations you
mention: there is