“I am always thinking of you both, and longing to have you home again that you may really know all our doings and lives. Mine lately you would assuredly consider rather of the dissipated kind. I have been giving some book-keeping lessons to Miss J.-B. She is a bright, spirited, brave, generous young lady, living alone, in true bachelor style. It took me three nights to teach her, and she begged me to come to dinner each time. She has a friend who is killing herself by hard work to support her younger sisters. I gather she would gladly give her friend help, for she speaks most sadly of the ‘modern fallacy’ ‘that the money must be earned.’ She thinks it might be given when people are dear friends: she says they’ve given the most precious thing and what difference can a little money make?”[16] Footnote 16: _Life of Octavia Hill._ Almost from the first Miss Hill’s letters to S. J.-B. took a serious tone. On March 18th she writes: “I wonder whether you will think me very impertinent if I say that I wonder you don’t see that, in turning away from so many important thoughts with a half joke, you are refusing God’s means of grace as much as in staying away from ordained services. It is no good my writing sermons, however.... I trust to live to see some one or some sorrow do for you what I cannot, to see such a peace as ‘passeth all understanding’ come over you, to see the thankful, perfect dedication of all your powers to His service for His sake.... I too long for a nice quiet talk with you. I enjoy it so, and your magnificent energy does me such good.” The talks were not always quiet. There are those still living who remember some animated discussions, for the two girls had stepped, as it were, out of totally different worlds. Here is a typical passage: S. J.-B. (hotly), “_I_ never heard the game laws attacked!” O. H. (calmly), “_I_ never heard them defended!” In the Easter holidays of that year both Miss Heaton and Miss Hill were guests at 13 Sussex Square, and the friendship between the latter and S. J.-B. was greatly deepened. “My dear loving strong child,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary after this visit. “I do love and reverence her.... Had a loving solemn letter (not altogether pleasing to me) on my telling her we had had a ‘row’ [at home]. Told her by return ‘Hang you,’ and bade her remember she was neither nurse nor parson. Dear, dear child, though. Mother calls it beautiful letter.” It was so characteristic of S. J.-B. to show that letter to her Mother! On April 29th Miss Octavia Hill writes again to her sister: “You dear old thing, I wish I had you here to give you a good rest and rousing, and refreshing. I am as merry as a grig.... Miss J.-B. and I are always doing things together—great companions I am with her. You know she’s teaching me Euclid. We went to see Holman Hunt’s picture,...”[17] Footnote 17: _Life of Octavia Hill._