Now—­as a friend’s privilege is—­I will talk without fear or favour of myself!  The last real contact with you was the Bishop’s too brief peep at us in Bowdon—­a shadowy time out of which his Amethyst ring flashes on my mind’s eye.  No!  Not Amethyst—­what IS the name?  Sapphire!—­(I have a little mental confusion on the subject.  I have a weak—­a very weak corner—­in my heart for another Bishop, an old friend of your Bishop’s—­Bishop Harold Browne; and have had the honour now and again of wearing his rings on my thumb—­a momentary relaxation of discipline and due respect, which I doubt if your Bishop would admit!!! though I hope he has a little love for me, frightened as I now and then am of him!!!!  The last time but one I was at Farnham, I was asked to stay on another two days to catch the Brownes’ fortieth wedding-day.  Just as we were going down to dinner I reproached the Bishop for not having on his “best” ring!  Very luckily—­for he said he always made a point of it on his wedding-day—­left me like a hot potato in the middle of the stairs and flew off to his room, and returned with the grand sapphire!)

Well, dear—­that’s a parenthesis—­to go back to Bowdon.  I was not to boast of there, and after the move to York, and I had fitted up my house and made up for lost time in writing work, I was a very much broken creature, keeping going to Jenner and getting orders to rest!—­and then came the order to Malta, not six months after we were sent to York, and I stayed to pack up and sent out all our worldly goods and chattels, and then started myself, and was taken ill in Paris and had to come back, and have been “of no account” for three years.

Well.  My news is now far better than once I hoped it ever could be.  I’m not strong, but I can work in moderation, though I can’t “rackett” the least bit.  And—­Rex is to come home in Spring!—­the season of hope and nest-building—­and I am trying not to wonder my wits away as to what part of the British Isles it will be in which I shall lay the cross-sticks and put in the moss and wool of our next nest!!  There is every reason to suppose we shall be “at home” for five years, I am thankful to say....

Rex loved Malta, and hates Ceylon.  But he has been very good and patient about it.

Latterly he has consoled himself a good deal with the study of Sanscrit, which he means me also to acquire, though I have not got far yet!  It is a beautiful character.  He says, “Of all the things I have tried Sanscrit is the most utterly delicious!  Of the alphabet alone there are (besides the ten vowels and thirty-three simple consonants) rather more than two hundred compound consonants,” etc., etc.!  He adds, “[Sanskrit:  aayi] are my detached initials, but I could write my whole name in ‘Devanagiri,’ or ‘Writing of the Gods.’”

TO A.E.

Ecclesfield. December 8, 1882.