Here Richard Norton ran in from the kitchen, with the teapot in his hand, followed by Jane; they both covered me with welcomes and reproaches.  I was very happy, I assure you.  We went into the kitchen and had early tea, talking all the while and all together.  Gabriel was in one of his impish moods, and made me laugh till I cried.  The first thing I thought, when I had time to think, was that I had been a fool to keep away so long and allow myself to grow sentimental; that it was altogether much more healthful for me to be in his dear company.

I came home in a much better frame of mind, although Gabriel insisted on walking nearly as far as Graysmill with me, and said as we parted: 

“You must never again leave me for so long, Emilia; I am lost without you, I am, indeed.”

I turned from him, half wishing he had not said this, feeling a little giddy, a little less strong; but, as I ran along, something hit me on the shoulder.  I looked behind me, and there he stood, like an imp of mischief, pelting me with pine-cones, which it seems he had collected in his pocket for that purpose.  So I had to laugh, and was cured again.

The year has at least begun well.

Adieu, my sweetest.  Things are often not so bad as we imagine.  With this truism I take my leave of you.

Your Emilia.

I think I forgot to send a New Year’s wish to Mrs. Rayner.  For you, my love, again all the good that this world holds.  May it rain upon you in ceaseless showers!

LETTER XXIV.

Graysmill, January 15th.

I have grown unutterably selfish.  I only remembered this morning that you had asked me to send you those books.  To think that a day should have come when I could forget to do something you had asked me!  I have seen to it, with much penitence.  Forgive me!

Your Emilia is a miserable specimen; she despises herself very much.  I go up and down all day like something that has lost its balance, neither have I any.  One hour I am absolutely happy; the next I am biting the dust.  One day I say to myself, I will never walk or talk or read or sit alone with him again,—­and perhaps for that one day I keep my word.  But then, the next, I do all I meant not to do, I pine for it till I bring it about.  And when I have sat beside him a little while, doing my lessons, the Greek loses its hold of my poor brain, my head swims, I make a blunder; then he laughs and says he cannot understand how such an apparently clever woman can have such a sieve for a brain.  I laugh, and tell him he’s unmannerly.  Then we both laugh, and I am well until I am ill again.