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THE   BRONTES                      85
written by her and Anne on Emily's birthday,
July 30th, 1841, to be opened four years later,
refer to the plan hopefully and Emily is interested
enough for part of her note to be taken up with
anticipating the future if the plan should ma-
terialise. " This day four years I wonder if we
shall still be dragging on in our present condition
or established to our hearts' content. I guess that
at the time appointed for the opening of this paper
we ... shall be all merrily seated in our own
sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing
seminary. ... It will be a fine warm summer
evening very different from this bleak look-
out. . . ." " This bleak look-out " was the view
from Haworth dining-room where Emily was sit-
ting writing her note. Both notes, though Anne's
less than Emily's, show that childish habit,
noticed in one of Charlotte's early chronicles,
of starting to write by putting down the exact
whereabouts of other members of the family.
Emily begins : " I am seated in the dining-room,
having just concluded tidying our desk boxes . . .
Papa is in the parlour - Aunt upstairs in her room.
Keeper is in the kitchen - Hero in his cage . . ."
One wonders if this almost geographical exacti-
tude was deliberate in order that four years later
the sisters should be able to see the past scene, or
whether it came from an unusual precision in the
Bronte make-up. Or was it just the Brontes' way,
Emily's especially, of coming down to earth for
practical purposes, living as they did so much in
an imaginary world ?
The Gondal-land finale of the notes together