d do them on my head. But they see me doing them in
my nice dress, in Mrs Brink''s fine parlour, & are astonished. I hear them
saying quietly to Mrs Brink ''O, Margery, what a talent she has! Will you
bring her to my house? Will you let her lead a circle, at a party of mine?''
But Mrs Brink says she would not dream of letting me water . my gifts by
attending gatherings like that. I have said she must let me use my powers
to help other people as well as her, since that is what I was given powers
for, & she always answers ''Of course, I know that. I will do that, in time. It is
only that, now I have you, 1 want to keep you to myself. Will you think me
so very selfish if I do that, just a little while longer?'' And so her friends
come in the afternoon, but never at night. The nights she keeps for us to
sit in. She only has Ruth come sometimes, bringing wine & biscuits if I
grow faint.
28 October 1874
To Millbank. It is only a week since my last visit, but the mood of the prison has
shifted, as if with the season, and it is a darker and more bitter place now, than
ever. The towers seemed to have grown higher and broader, and the windows to
have shrunk; the very scents of the place seemed to have changed, since I last
went there—the grounds smelling of fog and of chimney smoke as well as of sedge,