My serious stories won't ever bring me anything, but my ‘child’ stories ought to and my light ones, once I find a place….

I am up early copying MSS for you. When I get back I'll work as regular as you (tho' with what a difference) but I do seem to have broken through once and for all somehow, and I think there may be, if you hold me up by my heels and rattle, some pennies in me. Don't you? At last? On my table are wild daffodils—Shakespeare daffodils. They are so lovely that each time I look up I give them to you again. We shall go expeditions in the spring and write down all the signs and take a bastick and a small trowel and bring back treasures. Isn't that lovely where Shelley speaks of the ‘moonlight-coloured may’?

It's still (I think) very cold and I am in my wadded jacket with the pink 'un round my legs. But the sun is out and I'll go for a big walk this afternoon and warm up. I saw old Ma'am Gamel yesterday. She is a nice old dear. The way she speaks of you always makes me want to hug her. Yesterday she said I must pass by her before I go back as she would send you a little souvenir—and then she looked up at me and said, her blue eyes twinkling, “II a toujours ses beaux yeux, le jeune mari?” “Allez! Allez! On n'a pas honte?” called Thérèse, who was measuring biscuits for L. M. I also saw (looking for a bit of pumice stone: bought a bit for I sou) the old woman from the droguerie. She's got a new cat called Minne, “un grand, un sauvage, un fou avec des moustaches which would make a man pleurer d'envie.” In fact, she says, he is “presqu'un homme—il crache absolument comme un homme—et le soir il est toujours dans les rues.”

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I've just made myself a glass of boiling tea, very weak, with saxin. It's good. I drink it on and off all day. Do you remember that funny sort of scum that used to come on the water here? It still does. I have to take it off with the point of my paper-knife….

[“February 19. I woke up early this morning and when I opened the shutters the full round sun was just risen. I began to repeat that verse of Shakespeare's: ‘Lo, here the gentle lark weary of rest,’ and bounded back into bed. The bound made me cough—I spat—it tasted strange—it was bright red blood. Since then I've gone on spitting each time I cough a little more…. L. M. has gone for the doctor.” Journal, p. 75.]