I said that it would. He wanted to know if I would come the next day.
I meant to call Mary, but he prevented me by saying he could not stay
long enough. . . . [He seldom stayed unless he found Sophia alone.]
"Last evening Mr. Hawthorne came for Mary to go with him to Miss
Burley's [to a club which met every week]. Mary could not go. It
seemed a shame to refuse him. I came down to catch a glimpse of him.
He has a celestial expression which I do not like to lose. . . .
"The children have just come in, and brought me a host of odorous
violets. I made George a visit in the afternoon, in the midst of my
battle with headache, and to my question of 'How dost?' he replied,
for the first time, 'Pretty fair,' instead of the unvarying
'Middling.' Skeptics surely cannot disbelieve in one thing that is
invisible, and that is Pain."
May, 1838.
After my siesta I went down to Herbert Street with the book I wished
to leave, and when I opened the gate [of the Hawthornes' house] the
old woman with her hood on [an aunt of the Hawthornes] was stooping
over a flower-bed, planting seeds. She lifted her smiling face, which
must have been very pretty in her youth, and said, "How do you do,
Miss Peabody?" Yet I never saw her in my life before. She begged me to
walk in, but I refused, and gave her my message of thanks for the
book.
Ever thine wholly,
SOPHIECHEN.
May 14, 1838.
To-day I was tempted to trot about the room and arrange all my vases,
and give an air to the various knickknacks.
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