April - Page 2

Disraelis,
that she longs to see this mysterious political flower, and has made
me promise to telegraph when it appears, and she will come over.
Bur they are not going to do anything this year, and I only hope
those cold days did not send them off to the Paradise of flowers.
I am afraid their first impression of Germany was a chilly one.

Irais writes about once a week, and inquires after the garden
and the babies, and announces her intention of coming back as soon as
the numerous relations staying with her have left,--"which they won't do,"
she wrote the other day, "until the first frosts nip them off,
when they will disappear like belated dahlias--double ones of course,
for single dahlias are too charming to be compared to relations.
I have every sort of cousin and uncle and aunt here, and here they have
been ever since my husband's birthday--not the same ones exactly, but I
get so confused that I never know where one ends and the other begins.
My husband goes off after breakfast to look at his crops, he says,
and I am left at their mercy. I wish I had crops to go and look at--
I should be grateful even for one, and would look at it from morning
till night, and quite stare it out of countenance, sooner than stay
at home and have the truth told me by enigmatic aunts. Do you know
my Aunt Bertha? she, in particular, spends her time propounding obscure
questions for my solution. I get so tired and worried trying to guess
the answers, which are always truths supposed to be good for me to hear.
'Why do you wear your hair on your forehead?' she asks,--and that sets me off
wondering why I do wear it on my forehead, and what she wants to know for,
or whether she does know and only wants to know if I will answer truthfully.
'I am sure I don't know, aunt,' I say meekly, after puzzling over it
for ever so long; 'perhaps my maid knows. Shall I ring and ask her?'
And then she informs me that I wear it so to hide an ugly line she says
I have down the middle of my forehead, and that betokens a listless and
discontented disposition. Well, if she knew, what did she ask me for?
Whenever I am with them they ask me riddles like that, and I simply lead
a dog's life. Oh, my dear, relations are like drugs,--useful sometimes,
and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully
pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them."

From Minora I have only had one communication since her departure,
in which she thanked me for her pleasant visit, and said she was sending
me a bottle of English embrocation to rub on my bruises after skating;
that it was wonderful stuff, and she was sure I would like it; and that it
cost two marks, and would I send stamps. I pondered long over this.
Was