Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/180

 angry with herself at the idea that anything should make any difference to her, that she should be 'roused.' How truly my dear father understood, how highly he prized her exquisite sensitiveness of feeling; he was just the man to hold it infinitely above all the strong-mindedness in the world! I am stronger-minded, happily—I wonder if you like to know that I am, or whether you, too, prefer the weaker, the more womanly type, as people say, forgetting that most of the endurance, and a good deal of the work, in this world, is our 'womanly' inheritance, and that some of us, at least, do it with discredit. You don't want moralising, or philosophising, from me, though, dearest Walter, do you? You complain of my matter-of-fact letters as it is. I must not yield to my bad habit of talking to myself, rather than to you on paper.

"Well, then we came to Woolgreaves, and found the heartiest of welcomes, and everything prepared for our comfort. As I don't think you know anything more of the place than could be learned from our summer evening strolls about the grounds, when we always took such good care to keep well out of sight of the windows, I shall describe the house. You will like to know where and how I live, and to see in your fancy my surroundings. How glad I shall be when you, too, can send me a sketch of anything you can call 'home.' Of course, I don't mean that to apply to myself here; I never let any feeling of enjoyment really take possession of me because of its transitoriness, you know exactly in what sense I mean it, a certain feeling of comfort and quiet, of having tomorrow what you have had to-day, of seeing the same people and the same things around, which makes up the idea of home, though it must all vanish soon. I wonder if men get used to alterations in their modes of life so soon as women do? I fancy not. I know there is mamma, and I am sure a more easily pleased, less consciously selfish human being never existed (if her share in the comforts of home was disproportionate, it was my dear father's doing, not of her claiming), and yet she has been a week here, and all the luxury she lives in seems as natural to her, as indispensable as the easy-chair, the especially good tea, the daily glass of wine, the daintiest food, which were allotted to her at home. I saw the girls exchange a look this morning when she said, 'I hope it won't rain, I shall miss my afternoon drive so much!' I wonder what the look meant? Perhaps it meant, 'Listen to that upstart! She never had a carriage of her own in her life, and because she has the use of ours for a few days, she talks as if it were a necessary of life.' Perhaps—and I think they may be sufficiently genuinely sweet girls to make it possible—the look may have meant that they were glad to think they had it in their power to give her anything she enjoyed so much. I like it very much, too; there is more pleasure in driving about leisurely in a carriage, which you have not to pay for, than I imagined, but I should be sorry the girls knew I cared very much about it. I have not very much respect for their intellects, and silly heads are apt to take airs at the mere idea of being in a position to patronise. Decidedly, the best room in the house is mamma's, and she likes it so much. I often see the thought in her face, 'if we could have given him all these comforts, we might have had him with us now.' And so we might, Walter, so we might. Just think of the great age some of the very rich and grand folks live to; I am sure I have seen it in the papers hundreds of times, seventy, eighty, ninety sometimes, just because they are rich; rank has nothing to do with it beyond implying wealth, and if my father had been even a moderately rich man, if he had been anything but a poor man, he would have been alive to-day. We must try to be rich, my dearest Walter, and if that is impossible (and I fear it, I fear it much since I have been here, and Mr. Creswell has told me a good deal about how he made his money, and from all he says it seems indispensable to have some to begin with, there is truth in the saying that money makes money), if that is impossible, at least we must not think of marrying while we are poor. I don't think anything can compensate to oneself for being poor, and I am quite sure nothing can compensate for seeing any one whom one loves exposed to the privations and the humiliations of poverty. I have thought so much of this, dearest Walter, I have been so doubtful whether you think of it seriously enough. It seems absurd for a woman to say to a man that she ponders the exigencies of life more wisely, and sees its truths more fully than he does, but I sometimes think women do so, and in our case I think I estimate the trial and the struggle there is before us more according to their real weight and severity than you do, Walter, for you think of me only, whereas I think of you more