Page:The spirit of place, and other essays, Meynell, 1899.djvu/25

Rh beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left you, as hope saved."

With them—with her—he hid himself in the world, at Court, at the bar of St. James's coffee-house, whither he went on the Irish mail-day, and was "in pain except he saw MD's little handwriting." He hid with them in the long labours of these exquisite letters every night and morning. If no letter came, he comforted himself with thinking that "he had it yet to be happy with." And the world has agreed to hide under its own manifold and lachrymose blunders the grace and singularity—the distinction—of this sweet romance. "Little, sequestered pleasure-house"—it seemed as though "the many could not miss it," but not even the few have found it.

It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella should be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from Swift. But day and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD's little letters; he waits upon "her" will: "I shall make a sort of journal, and when it is full I will send it whether MD writes or not; and so that will be pretty." "Naughty girls that will not write to a body!"