To his young sister Keats's letters during the same period are charming. He lets her perceive nothing of his anxieties, and is full of brotherly tenderness and careful advice; of interest in her preparation for her approaching confirmation; of regrets that she is kept so much from him by the scruples of Mr and Mrs Abbey, with humorous admonitions to patience under that lady's 'unfeeling and ignorant gabble'; and of plans for coming over to see her when the weather and his throat allow or when he is in cash to pay the coach fare. On one day he is serious, begging her to lean on him in all things:--'We have been very little together: but you have not the less been with me in thought. You have no one else in the world besides me who would sacrifice anything for you--I feel myself the only Protector you have. In all your little troubles think of me with the thought that there is at least one person in England who if he could would help you out of them--I live in hopes of being able to make you happy.' Another day he is all playfulness, thinking of various little presents to please her, a selection of Tassie's gems, flowers from the Tottenham nursery garden, drawing materials--and here follows the passage above quoted (p. 10) against keeping live birds or fishes:-- They are better in the trees and the water,--though I must confess even now a partiality for a handsome globe of gold-fish--then I would have it hold ten pails of water and be fed continually fresh through a cool pipe with another pipe to let through the floor--well ventilated they would preserve all their beautiful silver and crimson. Then I would put it before a handsome painted window and shade it all round with Myrtles and Japonicas. I should like the window to open on to the Lake of Geneva--and there I'd sit and read all day like the picture of somebody reading. [Illustration: PL. VIII _From a posthumous portrait by Joseph Severn in the National Portrait Gallery Emery Walker ph &c._] For some time, in these letters to his sister, Keats expresses a constant anxiety at getting no news from their brother George at the distant Kentucky settlement whither he and his bride had at their last advices been bound. Pending such news, he keeps writing up his journal for them, and for nearly four months it grew and grew. Still in February, he promises to send in the next packet his '_Pot of Basil_, _St Agnes' Eve_, and if I should have finished it, a little thing called the _Eve of St Mark_. You see what fine Mother Radcliffe names I have--it is not my fault--I do not search for them. I have not gone on with _Hyperion_, for to tell the truth I have not been in great cue for writing lately--I must wait for the spring to rouse me up a little!'