Your long dissertation did not annoy or weary me at all, indeed it rejoiced mother’s heart. You seem to have all you want to _live_ and die upon. What can you need more? Certainly I have individually _great_ comfort and enjoyment from seeing Christ as my Substitute in a manner that I apprehend you do not. If it be, as I suppose, needful, I am sure your loving Father will give it you in His good time. As to your mental powers, it is _very strange_. We can only wait patiently and say, ‘It is the Lord. Let Him do what seemeth Him right’. I don’t suppose the important precious discipline you are going through could have been produced in time of full mental vigor. That will assuredly return if for your real good. Meanwhile you may well trust Him who has done such great things for you. I long as much as you to have you resting on my bosom. Rest you _must_ have: refreshment of spirit I pray you may have.... Nothing, as you say, invalidates the grand truths responded to from within. At all times the Eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. Your loving Mother, M. E. JEX-BLAKE.” A fortnight later she writes: “Only fancy, Daddy has been reading Colenso’s book!” CHAPTER XII VARIOUS PROJECTS AND VENTURES “Rest you must have: refreshment of spirit I pray you may have.” So wrote Mrs. Jex-Blake in the end of January; but even the physical rest was destined to be long delayed. As explained in the previous chapter, S. J.-B. did not at all draw to the idea of deserting her post before a suitable person arrived to supply it, and that suitable person was not easy to find. So the months went by, and it was not till April was well advanced that all arrangements were made for her departure within a fortnight. She was wild with delight at the prospect of getting home, but the fates were unkind. On May 3rd she writes in her diary: “Well, I do feel most uncommonly seedy,—no doubt about that,—having just waded through my packing somehow, and ‘bitterly thought of the morrow’, and how many leagues and hours lie between me and a snug bed, clean sheets and beef tea. But, somehow or other I do mean to push through and trust my luck for falling as usual on my feet, catlike. Specially anxious, by the bye, not to be spied out here or it’ll all go down to the baths”—she had been bathing in the Rhine before breakfast—“as I daresay this heavy cold may, which reduces me to, or below, the level of the inferior animals. Well, three days hence! Who can’t hold out that time?”