Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/392

ÆT. 44] should kill her with surprise. I went with Wardle to the place and read 'Robinson Crusoe' to him to see if I could make my voice heard, which I found easy to be done."

"I gave my lecture on Tuesday," he continues on the 7th of December; "it went off very well, and I was not at all nervous. I have been having an afternoon with Froggy, the loom, and our Coventry 'designer' so-called: the loom was the wisest of the four of us and understood much more of what the others said than anybody else did—at least I think so."

"I am just come back from Kelmscott," a week later, "where I was two days with Webb: it was rather melancholy after our jolly time of last summer: we had two fine, but very cold days; this morning brilliant but white-frosty. The river had been much flooded, but was lower the first day, and I caught two good pike: I should like to have sent you one in a letter. The blown-down tree is that one by the causeway gate: it makes a sad gap, for it was a fine branchy tree."

From his mother's house in Hertfordshire he writes to the children on Christmas Day:

"I have been much agitated for the past week by the goings on of an August Personage and Lord Beaconsfield; but we hope to agitate others in our turn next week. On the whole our side has got weaker, and many people are sluggish and hard to move who thoroughly agree with us. The E.Q.A. met in committee yesterday and agreed to do something, though not as dramatically as I could have wished: however, we meet again next Monday, and then I hope we shall arrange to have a big meeting before Parliament. So much for politics: 'tis a fine Christmas Day to-day, though there has been a little