The Intrusions of Peggy by Antonio Hope — Read

Barslett: July 11.

MY DEAR SARAH, -- How I wish you were here! You would enjoy yourself, and I should like to see you doing it -- indeed I should be amused. I never dare tell you face to face that you amuse me -- you'd swell visibly, like the person in Pickwick -- but I can write it quite safely. We are a family party -- or at any rate we look forward to being one some day, and even now escape none of the characteristics of such gatherings. We all think that the Proper Thing will happen some day, and we tell one another so. Not for a long while, of course! First -- and officially -- because Mortimer feels things so deeply (this is a reference to the Improper Thing which so nearly happened -- are you wincing, Sarah?); secondly -- and entirely unofficially -- because of a bad chaperon and a heavy pupil. You are a genius; you ought to have had seventeen daughters, all twins and all out together, and five eldest sons all immensely eligible! Nature is so limited. But me! I'm always there when I'm not wanted, and I do hate leaving a comfortable chair. But I try. Do I give you any clear idea when I say that a certain young person wants a deal of hoisting -- and is very ponderous to hoist? And I'm not her mother, or I really wouldn't complain. But sometimes I could shake her, as they say. No, I couldn't shake her, but I should like to get some hydraulic machinery that could. However -- it moves all the same! What's-his-name detected that in the world, which is certainly slow enough, and we all detect it in this interesting case -- or say we do. And I've great faith in repeating things. It spreads confidence, whence comes, dear Sarah, action.