_To Mrs. Martin_

26 Devonshire Street: Saturday, [about August 1851].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Day by day, and hour by hour almost, I have
wanted to thank you again and again for your remedy (which I did not
use, by the bye, being much better), and to answer your inquiry about
me, which really I could not deliver over to Arabel to answer; but the
baby did not go to the country with Wilson, and I have been 'devoted'
since she went away; _une âme perdue_, with not an instant out of the
four-and-twenty hours to call my own. It appeared, at the last, that
Wilson would have a drawback to her enjoyments in having the child, and
I did not choose that: she had only a fortnight, you see, after five
years, to be with her family. So I took her place with him; it was
necessary, for he was in a state of deplorable grief when he missed her,
and has refused ever since to allow any human being except me to do a
single thing for him. I hold him in my arms at night, dress and wash him
in the morning, walk out with him, and am not allowed either to read or
write above three minutes at a time. He has learnt to say in English 'No
more,' and I am bound to be obedient. Perhaps I may make out five
minutes just to write this, for he is playing in the passage with a
child of the house, but even so much is doubtful. He has made very good
friends with a girl here, and Arabel has sent her maid ever so often to
tempt him away for half an hour, so as to give me breathing time, but he
won't be tempted: he has it in his head that the world is in a
conspiracy against him to take 'mama' away after having taken 'Lily,'
and he is bound to resist it.

After all, the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of