“This will probably be a long letter, as I have not let you hear from me for a long time.  The card doesn’t count.  The last time I wrote, I was in the midst of Christmas preparations; now the Christmas holidays are past and gone.  Innstetten and my good friend Gieshuebler left nothing undone to make Holy Night as agreeable for me as possible, but I felt a little lonely and homesick for you.  Generally speaking, much as I have cause to be grateful and happy, I cannot rid myself entirely of a feeling of loneliness, and if I formerly made more fun than necessary, perhaps, of Hulda’s eternal tears of emotion, I am now being punished for it and have to fight against such tears myself, for Innstetten must not see them.  However, I am sure that it will all be better when our household is more enlivened, which is soon to be the case, my dear mama.  What I recently hinted at is now a certainty and Innstetten gives me daily proof of his joy on account of it.  It is not necessary to assure you how happy I myself am when I think of it, for the simple reason that I shall then have life and entertainment at home, or, as Geert says, ‘a dear little plaything.’  This word of his is doubtless proper, but I wish he would not use it, because it always give me a little shock and reminds me how young I am and that I still half belong in the nursery.  This notion never leaves me (Geert says it is pathological) and, as a result, the thing that should be my highest happiness is almost the contrary, a constant embarrassment for me.  Recently, dear mama, when the good Flemming damsels plied me with all sorts of questions imaginable, it seemed as though I were undergoing an examination poorly prepared, and I think I must have answered very stupidly.  I was out of sorts, too, for often what looks like sympathy is mere inquisitiveness, and theirs impressed me as the more meddlesome, since I have a long while yet to wait for the happy event.  Some time in the summer, early in July, I think.  You must come then, or better still, so soon as I am at all able to get about, I’ll take a vacation and set out for Hohen-Cremmen to see you.  Oh, how happy it makes me to think of it and of the Havelland air!  Here it is almost always cold and raw.  There I shall drive out upon the marsh every day and see red and yellow flowers everywhere, and I can even now see the baby stretching out its hands for them, for I know it must feel really at home there.  But I write this for you alone.  Innstetten must not know about it and I should excuse myself even to you for wanting to come to Hohen-Cremmen with the baby, and for announcing my visit so early, instead of inviting you urgently and cordially to Kessin, which, you may know, has fifteen hundred summer guests every year, and ships with all kinds of flags, and even a hotel among the dunes.  But if I show so little hospitality it is not because I am inhospitable.  I am not so degenerate as that.  It is simply because our residence, with all its handsome and unusual features,