She actually confessed that she loathed porridge!-- "though for example's sake, you know, I force myself to eat it.
I think it unfair to compel children to a discipline you cannot endure with them." She parted with me under the moonlit Citadel, at the head of a by-lane leading to the Trapps' cottage.

"I shall not write often, or see you," she said.

"It is seldom that I get a holiday or even an hour to myself, and we will not unsettle ourselves"-- mark, if the child could not, the noble condescension--"in our duties that are perhaps the more blessed for being stern.

But a year hence for certain, if spared, we will meet.

Until then be a gentleman always and--I may ask it now--for my sake." So we parted, and for a whole year I saw nothing of her, nor heard except at Christmas, when she sent me a closely written letter of six sheets, of which I will transcribe only the poetical conclusion: "Christmas comes but once a year: And why?
we well may ask.
Repine not.