your mother seizes it again and pops it down.

"Very well, be as freckled as you please; what does it matter to me,
after all? It's so pretty to have freckles, isn't it? Please
yourself! Only I warn you that you'll look like a fig before the
year's out!"

Oh, dear me, it seems I'm in good spirits to-day! Why not, with your
letter in my pocket? I am sitting out of doors in the woods. I love
this place, apart from its own beauty; I like to think of my father
out here in the open, dreaming his young dreams. Indoors in the old
house I am often miserable, with a misery beyond my own, remembering
how he suffered once between those walls.

No, I am not really in good spirits, although there comes now and
again a little gust of light-heartedness. You know me. For the rest,
I hate myself, I am a worm. The empire of myself is lost; I am
sitting low on the ground, where my troubles laid me, letting what
may run over me. I hate myself both for my abject hopelessness and
for my incapacity to take comfort at the hands of those about me.
But oh! the deadliness of their life is past description; they have
neither breadth nor health in their thoughts. I am not speaking of
the old women; their lives are at an end; they sit as little
children there, simple of heart; what they were I ask not, nor boots
it now, for their day is done. But George Fletcher and his family,
and my various more distant relatives, and my neighbours far and
near--oh, I shall never be able to live here! Believe me; you will
soon see me back. Good people, mind you, one and all, according to
their lights; God-fearing, law-abiding, nothing questioning, one and
all. I shall soon expect to see the earth stand still and roll