Arthur, too, like the rest of them, when he came over to give me his brotherly blessing, wished to know what you were like. I didn't pretend to remember your outward appearance too well,--told him you looked like a common or garden Englishman, and roused his suspicions by so careless a championship of my choice. He accused me of being in reality highly sentimental about you, and with having at that moment your portrait concealed and strung around my neck in a locket. Mother-Aunt stood up for me against him, declaring I was "too sensible a girl for nonsense of that sort." (It is a little weakness of hers, you know, to resent extremes of endearment towards anyone but herself in those she has "brooded," and she has thought us hitherto most restrained and proper--as, indeed, have we not been?) Arthur and I exchanged tokens of truce: in a little while off went my aunt to bed, leaving us alone. Then, for he is the one of us that I am most frank with: "Arthur," cried I, and up came your little locket like a bucket from a well, for him to have his first sight of you, my Beloved. He objected that he could not see faces in a nutshell; and I suppose others cannot: only I. He, too, is gone. If you had been coming he would have spared another day--for to-day _was_ planned and dated, you will remember--and we would have ridden halfway to meet you. But, as fate has tripped you, and made all comings on your part indefinite, he sends you his hopes for a later meeting. How is your poor foot? I suppose, as it is ill, I may send it a kiss by post and wish it well? I do. Truly, you are to let me know if it gives you much pain, and I will lie awake thinking of you. This is not sentimental, for if one knows that a friend is occupied over one's sleeplessness one feels the comfort. I am perplexed how else to give you my company: your mother, I know, could not yet truly welcome me; and I wish to be as patient as possible, and not push for favors that are not offered. So I cannot come and ask to take you out in _her_ carriage, nor come and carry you away in mine. We must try how fast we can hold hands at a distance. I have kept up to where you have been reading in "Richard Feverel," though it has been a scramble: for I have less opportunity of reading, I with my feet, than you without yours. In _your_ book I have just got to the smuggling away of General Monk in the perforated coffin, and my sense of history capitulates in an abandonment of laughter. I yield! The Gaul's invasion of Britain always becomes broad farce when he attempts it. This in clever ludicrousness beats the unintentional comedy of Victor Hugo's "John-Jim-Jack" as a name typical of Anglo-Saxon christenings. But Dumas, through a dozen absurdities, knows apparently how to stalk his quarry: so large a genius may play the fool and remain wise.