Here is love, dearest! help yourself to just as much as you wish for;
though all that I send is good for you! No letter from you since
Florence, but I am neither sad nor anxious: only all the more your
loving.
LETTER XXXVII.
Beloved: The weather is as gray as England to-day, and much rainier. To
feel it on my cheeks and be back north with that and warmer things, I
would go out in it in the face of protests, and had to go alone--not
Arthur even being in the mood just then for a patriotic quest of the
uncomfortable. I had myself oared into the lagoons across a racing current
and a driving head-wind which made my gondolier bend like a distressed
poplar over his oar; patience on a monument smiling at backsheesh--"all
comes to him who knows."
Of course, for comfort and pleasure, and everything but economy, we have
picked up a gondolier to pet: we making much of him, and he much out of
us. He takes Arthur to a place where he can bathe--to use his own
expression--"cleanly," that is to say, unconventionally; and this
appropriately enough is on the borders of a land called "the Garden of
Eden" (being named so after its owners). He--"Charon," I call him--is
large and of ruddy countenance, and talks English in blinkers--that is
to say, gondola English--out of which he could not find words to summon
me a cab even if it were not opposed to his interests.
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