m fish would be a very
pleasant and wholesome change. This is really a sad state of
things, and _here_ the railways seem very likely to carry away
our butter, and it is now such a price, quite ex[h]orbitant.
Why did I put an _h_ in? Is it to prove the truth of what
you say, that ladies do not spell well? A letter which I once
wrote when a girl was a wonderful specimen of bad spelling.

[Footnote 49: See "Queen of the Air,"]

[Footnote 50: See "Fors Clavigera," Letter XXX.]

* * * * *

_15th May._

I have found such lovely passages in Vol. 1 this morning that I am
delighted, and have begun to copy one of them. You do float in such
beautiful things sometimes that you make me feel I don't know how!

How I thank you for ever having written them, for though late in the
day, they were written for _me_, and have at length reached me!

You are so candid about your age that I shall tell you mine! I am
astonished to find myself sixty-eight--very near the Psalmist's
threescore and ten. Much illness and much sorrow, and then I woke up
to find myself _old_, and as if I had lost a great part of my life.
Let us hope it was not all lost.

I think _you_ can understand me when I say that I have a great fund of
love, and no one to spend it upon, because there are not any to whom
I could give it _fully_, and I love my pets so dearly, but I _dare
not_ and cannot enjoy it fully because--they _die_, or get injured,
and then my misery is intense. I feel as if I could tell _you_ much,
because your sympathy is so refined and so tender and true. Cannot I
be a sort of second mother to you? I am sure the first one was often
praying for blessings for you, and in this, at least, I resemble her.

Am I tiresome writing all this? It just came, and you said I was to
write what did. We have had some nice rain, but followed not by
warmth, but a cruel _east_ wind.

* * * * *

ABOUT WRENS.

This year I have seen wrens' nests in three different kinds of
places--one built in the angle of a doorway, one under a bank, and a
third near the top of a raspberry bush; this last was so large that
when our gardener first saw it, he thought it was a swarm of bees. It
seems a pleasure to this active bird to build; he will begin to build
several nests sometimes before he completes one for Jenny Wren to lay
her eggs and make her nursery. Think how busy b