Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/76



only brother, Austin, was married on July 1, 1856, and from that time she was part of every incident in his household. Her first little note to his wife, with which "The Single Hound" is prefaced, expressed her feeling perfectly: One sister have I in our house And one a hedge away— There's only one recorded But both belong to me.

In the years following that crucial visit to Washington and Philadelphia, her life moved on without external change, except that she imperceptibly but increasingly withdrew from outside festivities and public appearances and became less accessible to all save her chosen few. But her brother's marriage brought a thrilling new element into her life, and she continued to flit across the intervening lawns behind the bulwark of high hemlock hedges long after all other visits had definitely ceased. The narrow path "just wide enough for two who love" ran luringly between, whether her light flashed across the snow to them under a polar moon, while she sat up to watch over her flowers and keep them from freezing, or past the rosebushes of a midsummer, where the moths were at their amorous trafficking.

Emily's own conservatory was like fairyland at all seasons, especially in comparison with the dreary white