There was at present, however, nothing to be called thought in the mind of Letty. She had even lost much of what faculty of thinking had been developed in her by the care of Cousin Godfrey. That had speedily followed the decay of the aspiration kindled in her by Mary. Her whole life now--as much of it, that is, as was awake--was Tom, and only Tom. Her whole day was but the continuous and little varied hope of his presence. Most of the time she had a book in her hands, but ever again book and hands would sink into her lap, and she would sit staring before her at nothing. She was not unhappy, she was only not happy. At first it was a speechless delight to have as many novels as she pleased, and she thought Tom the very prince of bounty in not merely permitting her to read them, but bringing them to her, one after the other, sometimes two at once, in spendthrift profusion. The first thing that made her aware she was not quite happy was the discovery that novels were losing their charm, that they were not sufficient to make her day pass, that they were only dessert, and she had no dinner. When it came to difficulty in going on with a new one long enough to get interested in it, she sighed heavily, and began to think that perhaps life was rather a dreary thing--at least considerably diluted with the unsatisfactory. How many of my readers feel the same! How few of them will recognize that the state of things would indeed be desperate were it otherwise! How many would go on and on being only butterflies, but for life's dismay! And who would choose to be a butterfly, even if life and summer and the flowers were to last for ever! "I would," I fancy this and that reader saying. "Then," I answer, "the only argument you are equal to, is the fact that life nor summer nor the flowers do last for ever." "I suppose I am made a butterfly," do you say? "seeing I prefer to be one." "Ah! do you say so, indeed? Then you begin to excuse yourself, and what does that mean? It means that you are no butterfly, for a butterfly--no, nor an angel in heaven--could never begin excusing the law of its existence. Butterfly-brother, the hail will be upon you." I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels taken alone serve one much as sweetmeats _ad libitum_ do children, nor that she had to prove that life has in it that spiritual quinine, precious because bitter, whose part it is to wake the higher hunger.