Last night Peterkins came up with me to keep guard against any further intrusion of mice.  I put her to sleep on the couch:  but she discarded the red shawl I had prepared for her at the bottom, and lay at the top most uncomfortably in a parcel of millinery into which from one end I had already made excavations, so that it formed a large bag.  Into the further end of this bag Turks crept and snuggled down:  but every time she turned in the night (and it seemed very often) the brown paper crackled and woke me up.  So at last I took it up and shook out its contents; and Pippins slept soundly on red flannel till Nan-nan brought the tea.

You will notice that in this small narrative Peterkins gets three names:  it is a fashion that runs through the household, beginning with the Mother-Aunt, who on some days speaks of Nan-nan as “the old lady,” and sometimes as “that girl,” all according to the two tempers she has about Nan-nan’s privileged position in regard to me.

You were only here yesterday, and already I want you again so much, so much!

    Your never satisfied but always loving.

LETTER V.

Most Beloved:  I have been thinking, staring at this blank piece of paper, and wondering how there am I ever to say what I have in me here—­not wishing to say anything at all, but just to be!  I feel that I am living now only because you love me:  and that my life will have run out, like this penful of ink, when that use in me is past.  Not yet, Beloved, oh, not yet!  Nothing is finished that we have to do and be:—­hardly begun!  I will not call even this “midsummer,” however much it seems so:  it is still only spring.

Every day your love binds me more deeply than I knew the day before:  so that no day is the same now, but each one a little happier than the last.  My own, you are my very own!  And yet, true as that is, it is not so true as that I am your own.  It is less absolute, I mean; and must be so, because I cannot very well take possession of anything when I am given over heart and soul out of my own possession:  there isn’t enough identity left in me, I am yours so much, so much!  All this is useless to say, yet what can I say else, if I have to begin saying anything?

Could I truly be your “star and goddess,” as you call me, Beloved, I would do you the service of Thetis at least (who did it for a greater than herself)—­

    “Bid Heaven and Earth combine their charms,
       And round you early, round you late,
     Briareus fold his hundred arms
      To guard you from your single fate.”

But I haven’t got power over an eight-armed octopus even:  so am merely a very helpless loving nonentity which merges itself most happily in you, and begs to be lifted to no pedestal at all, at all.