Autograph letter signed : Denmark Hill, to her mother, 1848 June 7.

Asking if Melville has received the order for £2 she sent for the schools. The other day Mrs. Ruskin gave her "a very nice dress of white and yellow checked silk which she had made ten years ago for Johns [sic] marriage whenever that event should take place..." Ever since, she has kept it carefully rolled up in towels because when it came home she thought it too youthful. Miss Rutherford has made it up into "a beautiful evening dress." For the morning she has also got a rose coloured muslin because the weather is hot and gardening dirties dresses soon. Last night her mother would have laughed "to have seen John and I going to our garden with Mungo." Climbing the haystack, John went the wrong way and slipped up to his chin in the straw, with Mungo jumping over and trying to annihilate him. They were in "fits of laughter," but at last John, with his best clothes on, "got out of his hole such a figure as you never saw... and he was so delighted with it." Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin have been away for the whole day, and they have had a very good time, working all the morning; lunching on strawberries and cream; feeding the swans in Dulwich pond, where Mungo swam, exciting the birds; visiting Dulwich Gallery, for her first sight of the pictures; dining at six. Mrs. Gardner and others called, and were very glad to see her, saying that she "looked a hundred times better & five or six years younger than last year." William [Gardner] amuses himself by driving a cabriolet and still thinks there is no place like Scotland. Then Mrs. William Richardson called, "horribly tawdry as usual," and then the daughter of Sir John M. Taggart. Yesterday they were in town all day, she in court mourning at Mr. Ruskin's desire, upon which Miss Rutherford complimented her "very much": costume described. Now she goes into town to call on Lady Lansdoune and Mrs. Birson, returning early to receive Lady Colyhoun, who dines with them. She is to call for John, who will be at the Museum all day, studying Greek vases. Comments on the children... "that was a capital idea of Prizie at forty by George he must be getting coarse and sensual I think!" Love to her father, etc.