'Whether my hopes are quite fallacious or not, I do not know; but
sometimes I fancy that the remedies prescribed by Mr. Teale, and
approved--as I was glad to learn--by Dr. Forbes, are working a good
result. Consumption, I am aware, is a flattering malady, but
certainly Anne's illness has of late assumed a less alarming
character than it had in the beginning: the hectic is allayed; the
cough gives a more frequent reprieve. Could I but believe she would
live two years--a year longer, I should be thankful: I dreaded the
terrors of the swift messenger which snatched Emily from us, as it
seemed, in a few days.
'The parcel came yesterday. You and Mr. Smith do nothing by halves.
Neither of you care for being thanked, so I will keep my gratitude in
my own mind. The choice of books is perfect. Papa is at this moment
reading Macaulay's _History_, which he had wished to see. Anne is
engaged with one of Frederika Bremer's tales.
'I wish I could send a parcel in return; I had hoped to have had one
by this time ready to despatch. When I saw you and Mr. Smith in
London, I little thought of all that was to come between July and
Spring: how my thoughts were to be caught away from imagination,
enlisted and absorbed in realities the most cruel.
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