Most eagerly I waited for my letters. Emily wrote to me very constantly:
“Don’t you find it quite exhilarating, almost intoxicating, to be so free? I think it is quite wonderful. At home you cannot live your own life. You have to struggle to keep even a little apart for yourself. It is so hard to stand aloof from our mothers, and yet they are only hurt and insulted if you tell them what is in your heart. It is such a relief not to have to be anything to anybody, but just to please yourself. I am sure mother and I have suffered a great deal from trying to keep up our old relations. Yet she would not let me go. When I come home in the evening and think that I needn’t say anything to anybody, nor do anything for anybody, but just have the evening for myself, I am overjoyed.
“I have begun to write a story——”
Again, a little later, she wrote:
“As I go to school by Old Brayford village in the morning the birds are thrilling wonderfully and everything seems stirring. Very likely there will be a set-back, and after that spring will come in truth.
“When shall you come and see me? I cannot think of a spring without you. The railways are the only fine exciting things here—one is only a few yards away from school. All day long I am watching the great Midland trains go south. They are very lucky to be able to rush southward through the sunshine.
“The crows are very interesting. They flap past all the time we’re out in the yard. The railways and the crows make the charm of my life in Brayford. The other day I saw no end of pairs of crows. Do
