Really I have forgotten.

I suppose I did mean something, though it was a day of chaos and packing boxes--try to think I did therefore, and let it pass.
You please me--oh, so much--by the words about my husband.

When you wrote to praise my poems, of course I had to bear it--I couldn't turn round and say, 'Well, and why don't you praise him, who is worth twenty of me?
Praise my second Me, as well as my Me proper, if you please.' One's forced to be rather decent and modest for one's husband as well as for one's self, even if it's harder.

I couldn't pull at your coat to read 'Pippa Passes,' for instance.

I can't now.
But you have put him on the shelf, so we have both taken courage to send you his new volumes, 'Men and Women,' not that you may say 'pleasant things' of them or think yourself bound to say anything indeed, but that you may accept them as a sign of the esteem and admiration of both of us.