More Than Kin a book of Kindness

is. Therefore if I turn waywardly, as it may seem, from my theme to my Sister, and back, to and fro, let the reader remember that I have intended no better order, but only to write on as heart and mind should work together?not treatise-like. As over my life, so over my writing my Dozen is like a sky over a landscape; sometimes I am conscious of the sky mainly, anon of the land-view, again of both, sometimes the sky is night-hidden, now sun-gleaming, again breaking in with a rain or a breeze. A glance up the page shows me that I have written her name "Dozen." Ah! well, I will not remove it. What shame in my fancies? Why blush for my quips and sports? Know, then, friendly reader (and if thou be not friendly, why, beshrew thee! Go learn of birds and flowers, which think neither of decking nor undecking themselves, nor of showing themselves nor hiding!) that Dozen is my name in brief for my Sister. You may count twelve letters in "Sister Marian;" whence I call her "Dozen" for short. What say you? That perhaps it were well to draw a silence around my carolings? Go to! Do I constrain you? And may a bird not fly in the air lest some one think him too blith'e, or say he should nest his raptures? For the light of kindness which streams over me from my Dozen, what return make I? Ah! I fear it is long since I have bethought me enough of that. I must consider it. I will invent some delight for her, some bit of surprising thought. For it is the best sweetness of a kindness...