Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/627

218 while. But we shall have done something even then, as we shall have forced intelligent people to consider the matter; and then there will come some favourable conjunction of circumstances in due time which will call for our active work again. If I am alive then I shall chip in again, and one advantage I shall have, that I shall know much better what to do and what to forbear than this first time."

In this settled low content he spent not an unhappy autumn, as a series of letters in August and September sufficiently show. But before quoting from these I may be pardoned for inserting a letter of the same autumn, addressed to "the baby of the lot" who had been children together through the past twenty years, Miss Margaret Burne-Jones. She was married this year on the 4th of September,

"Kelmscott House, "August 21st, 1888.

"Dearest Margery,

"I have bidden our Mr. Smith to send you an 'article' called a Hammersmith Rug (made at Merton Abbey) which Janey and I ask you to take as a small and unimportant addition to your 'hards.' If it should at any time get dirty (as is likely, since London will not be pulled down for a few months, I judge) if you send it to Merton we can wash it as good as new.

"Also with this little gift take my hearty good wishes for your happiness, which you will easily believe are not at all conventional, since you will remember how prettily and dearly you have always behaved to me since you were a dear little child, in the days when I was really a young man, but thought myself rather old.