incontestable improvements they suggest.  When shall I tell you more ... on Monday or Tuesday? That I must know—­because you appointed Monday, ‘if nothing happened—­’ and Mr. K. happened—­can you let me hear by our early post to-morrow—­as on Monday I am to be with Moxon early, you know—­and no letters arrive before 11-1/2 or 12.  I was not very well yesterday, but to-day am much better—­and you,—­I say how I am precisely to have a double right to know all about you, dearest, in this snow and cold!  How do you bear it?  And Mr. K. spoke of ‘that being your worst day.’  Oh, dear dearest Ba, remember how I live in you—­on the hopes, with the memory of you.  Bless you ever!

R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

[Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]

I do not understand how my letters limp so instead of flying as they ought with the feathers I give them, and how you did not receive last night, nor even early this morning, what left me at two o’clock yesterday.  But I understand now the not hearing from you—­you were not well.  Not well, not well ... that is always ‘happening’ at least.  And Mr. Moxon, who is to have his first sheet, whether you are well or ill!  It is wrong ... yes, very wrong—­and if one point of wrongness is touched, we shall not easily get right again—­as I think mournfully, feeling confident (call me Cassandra, but I cannot jest about it) feeling certain that it will end (the means being so persisted in) by some serious illness—­serious sorrow,—­on yours and my part.

As to Monday, Mr. Kenyon said he would come again on Sunday—­in which case, Monday will be clear.  If he should not come on Sunday, he will or may on Monday,—­yet—­oh, in every case, perhaps you can come on Monday—­there will be no time to let you know of Mr. Kenyon—­and probably we shall be safe, and your being in town seems to fix the day.  For myself I am well enough, and the wind has changed, which will make me better—­this cold weather oppresses and weakens me, but it is close to April and can’t last and won’t last—­it is warmer already.  Beware of the notes!  They are not Ba’s—­except for the insolence, nor EBB’s—­because of the carelessness.  If I had known, moreover, that you were going to Moxon’s on Monday, they should have gone to the fire rather than provoked you into superfluous work for the short interval.  Just so much are they despised of both EBB and Ba.

I am glad I did not hear from you yesterday because you were not well, and you must never write when you are not well.  But if you had been quite well, should I have heard?—­I doubt it.  You meant me to hear from you only once, from Thursday to Monday.  Is it not the truth now that you hate writing to me?