I do hope you have not been made sick by doing so many errands in such a short time.  The little chair has come and Mr. W. is much pleased with it.  Nobody is so punctual as you.  We were all amazed at receiving the picture so soon.  How could you possibly have gotten home and packed it and marked the catalogues and bought the chair and written the check and sent me the little package of Japanese corn-seed and written me the note and have had a moment even to look at A.’s portrait?  It is a mystery to me.  You are a wonder of a woman!  You are a genius!  You are a beloved friend! I thank you again and again.  Just think of the good you have done us.  Shall I send you some more daisies?  I have written in the greatest haste.  That is the reason I have done no better and not because I am seventy years old.

Here is her last note to Mrs. Washburn, dated June 3: 

The box of daisies, clover, and grass came on Saturday.  We set the plants out in the box in which they came, and mixed the grass with what cut flowers we had, in the very prettiest receptacle for flowers I ever saw, just given M. The plants look this morning like a piece of Wildwood and a piece of you, and will gladden every spring we live to see....  We are packing for Dorset, though we do not mean to go if this weather lasts.  I wonder if you have a “daily rose”?  I have just bought one; first heard of it at the Centennial.  It is said to bloom every day from May to December.

I am going out, now, to do ever so many errands for H.’s outfit for college.  Give our dear love to Mr. Washburn and Julia.  O, what a mercy it is to have somebody to love. [7]

On the 6th of June Mrs. Prentiss went to Dorset for the last time.  Her husband, after her departure, thus referred to this period: 

For four or five weeks after coming here she was very much occupied about the house, and seemed rather weary and care-worn.  But the pressure was then over and she had leisure for her flowers and her painting, for going to the woods with the girls, and for taking her favorite drives with me.  She spoke repeatedly of you and other friends.  On the 23d of July I started for Monmouth Beach.  The week preceding this little journey was one of the happiest of our married life.  No words can tell how sweet and loving and bright—­in a word, how just like herself—­she was.  The impassion of that week accompanied me to the sea-side and continued with me during my whole stay there.  As day after day I sat looking out upon the ocean, or walked alone up and down the shore, she was still in all my thoughts.  The noise of the breakers, the boundless expanse of waters, the passing ships, going out and coming in, recalled similar scenes long ago on the coast of Maine, before and after our marriage—­scenes with which her image was indissolubly blended.  Then I met old friends and found new ones, who talked to me with grateful enthusiasm of “Stepping Heavenward,”