Friday nightMargaret love:
I have wanted to write you in the bloom of every morning but I do sleep and then I dash and it is night and darkness and a pen-wearied hand I have before I know it. And evenings slide so fast when the grate fire burns and we go wandering up and down the world! But I have loved you increasingly every day in the hope somehow that an access [sic] of affection could do something about the lecture tomorrow! I take comfort in thinking that at least you can't do that for another year.
I worked dutifully for two days on lectures but New Year's and Nell were too much and Thursday and today I have had a gorgeous bout on my saint legend which leads like a chamois leaping from peak to peak from one fascinating thing to another. I come home at night utterly begrieved from vast portfolios that never knew a duster, but utterly happy and only contrite because you are suffering over that confounded lecture when I am so happy.
Of course Erkenwald is only part of the whole week's dear pleasure - the being with Emily, and staying with the Chases, and having Nell yesterday and today, and generally feeling that the world is very good when there is so much love and so many good folk in it. - Oh, Maggie, if only you could have dashed away and we could have had this week end! It would have made you forget the horrid cold and the tangle of themes, and I would have have [sic] forgiven myself at least one scrap for having almost given you and your Father your deaths. I mean to abjure suitcases henceforth.
Tell me soon that it is a better world and that you are a bit better or I shall be taking the train. Indeed I don't know how I shall resist when Emily goes off, as she talk[s] of doing, to see Bertha very shortly - but perhaps by that time my lecture conscience will have subdued me.
Good night, dear, my my dear -
Yours, Laura.
Much love to Bertha to whom I meant also to write tonight