[Boston—Wednesday, 28 May 1873]
Wednesday. Still very warm and dusty. Went out to Mrs William Hunts in Milton and passed the day with J. on their lovely place. There was a great mustering of clouds. Their farm, which is not unlike an unkempt Abbotsford, about a mile in extent, was in the perfect beauty of early Spring. She is fond of the place but her cares are many and her nature one singularly impatient of the restraints imposed by the care of children and the anxieties of ill-regulated money affairs.
For people who are not very rich, the plan they are pursuing appears entirely ruinous. There seemed 50 men at work, some painting, some in the stable, some planting trees and attending to the grounds. She has an under current of trouble and vexation under all she sees and is and does. Hunt did not return until 6 P.M. & then as if he dreaded to meet her, but we rather broke the contact by our presence. He was amiable and lovely as ever. Elly the oldest girl grows tall and graceful, preserving her childish unconsciousness. Enid is a most preposterous child in her behavior, too much indulged by her mother,—Mabel is a beautiful child wide-eyed and filled with all desire and self forgetfulness—Paul, the baby boy, seems to me nervous, too high strung and not altogether sound. A fine child but terribly passionate and proud. When his mother took the corkscrew from him at table as an unfit plaything he slid from his high chair and refused to touch his food but marched from the room with a drawn up, speechless, constrained air of a young officer who had received a personal affront in the army. J. said he never saw the like in so young a child.
