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Oct 12th [added later:] 1870

My dear Laura

I have sent your offer for the donkey & cart on to the Langtons – a little time ago they wd have jumped at it – but now I'm afraid they will either have given it up to somebody else or else settled to take it with them. I was very glad to have that little sight of you – tho' it was v. short. I shall really hope

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for you at Down sometime for I am sure you must take rests often – It can be the only way for you to bear up & go on without an utter breakdown. I can feel how hard it must be for you anyhow to struggle on- It wd be hard enough for anybody who had strength with so many troubles & worries & no one to lean upon.

We are going to leave home

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[added later by HEL:] (my Father's Tommy)

& now he has fallen again & we have sternly forbidden more riding on him & so & so it is a gt fear whether he won't give it up altogether. There is something in riding so wholesome.

I think one can pace & scarcely change the current of your ideas wee bit - but whether it is the attention necessary, or the going quick thro' the air, I'm sure there is something

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in riding that has a most inspiring effect. I wish you liked dogs – that is if you are allowed to have one in the house – I do find such enormous contentment in my little angel – few if anybody can have such an animal – but I do not see that these people like their inferior beasts as well. It is such a pleasure to have something

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that is always glad to see you always sorry to leave & glad to come back which you can always talk nonsense to & a good deal of sense too - & a something to which there are no drawbacks, unless it hurts, or unless in its youth you have too much spared the rod & so spoiled your child – I didn't the least want to have a dog – my heart was too full of the delights of my last cat – but I force myself

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into it & I am so amply repaid. But I'm afraid your heart is hard somehow tho' I've never heard you discuss the question. The little At Fanny has left us now & gone home. The more I saw her the more lost in astonishment I felt at her sharpness & freshness of mind & at her vehement prejudices – It is a gt mystery how anybody can have lost some of these last.

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She is a gt. example […]

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could remember one single abstract remark. […]

[5]

[ma]jority of people read her now […]

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half thorough going enough […]