bodings creep upon me, strong and vigorous as ever. They haunt me all through the night, waking and dreaming; but with the morrow they wax fainter and duller—already I have the inevitably blunted memory that attends things that happened yesterday, not to-day. I hurry downstairs quickly, and scramble through my breakfast, for am I not going to do something most charming and delightful this morning, and can I possibly begin it a moment too soon?
It is barely half-past nine when, with a sigh of delight, I fetch my desk and sit down at the school-room table to write my first love-letter. How Paul laughed at my writing-paper the other day, as well he might, for it is mysterious and wonderful indeed. The colour is a sort of bilious yellow, and the monogram (of Pimpernel manufacture) is eccentric, the H being so very little and the A so very big; while the whirligigs and flourishes that surround it remind one of a loose bundle of snakes. It is not an easy matter to find a pen that is good enough for addressing my sweetheart, and the ink is not what it should be, but at last I begin with many a smile and pause between, and what I say to him I shall not tell you, for that is a secret between Paul and me. The mere touch of the paper sends a swift delight and comfort to my heart: is it not going from me to him, and if he holds it in his hand and sends me an answer, shall I not know then that all my miserable fears are vain and idle as a breath of summer wind? He does not seem so far away from me now; I am speaking to him, and I know that the words written on this paltry bit of paper will cleave to him, straight as an arrow, over moor and field, and town and sea, And as I write it seems to me that now—not days later, but now—he is listening to me and replying. It is not a very long letter, saucy, and loving, with none of my doubts in it. They are silly enough spoken; they would look more ridiculous still on paper.
