So there they lie safe till
doomsday!
The M.-A. has been very gracious and clear after her little outbreak of
yesterday: her repentances, after I have hurt her feelings, are so gentle
and sweet, they always fill me with compunction. Finding that I would go
on with the thing I was doing, she volunteered to come and read to me: a
requiem over the bone of contention which we had gnawed between us. Was
not that pretty and charitable? She read Tennyson's Life for a solid
hour, and continued it to-day. Isn't it funny that she should take up such
a book?--she who "can't abide" Tennyson or Browning or Shakespeare: only
likes Byron, I suppose because it was the right and fashionable liking
when she was young. Yet she is plodding through the Life religiously--only
skipping the verses. I have come across two little specimens of "Death and
the child" in it. His son, Lionel, was carried out in a blanket one night
in the great comet year, and waking up under the stars asked, "Am I dead?"
Number two is of a little girl at Wellington's funeral who saw his charger
carrying his _boots_, and asked, "Shall I be like that after I die?"
A queer old lady came to lunch yesterday, a great traveler, though lame
on two crutches. We carefully hid all guide-books and maps, and held our
peace about next month, lest she should insist on coming too: though I
think Nineveh was the place she was most anxious to go to, if the M.
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