The reading stopped at "... the sterres be." (624.9)
ALP has been asking her husband to get up as it is morning, saying that she wants to go for a walk with him to Howth. Now she offers an alternative. They could instead go to the coast and watch for the letter, that he has been waiting for, to be cast ashore in the bottle that is riding the waves, bob, boy, bottledby. She had written that letter which was about the man of her dreams (mains of me draims.) Once she met him, she had bottled the letter, screwed and corked it, dropping the bottle with the letter in the ocean at Boston, Mass (rather, Maston, Boss.) She is perhaps thinking of another letter too in which she had written about her hopes. She had buried that letter. In Book 1 (p. 110), we had read about the hen, Belinda of the Dorans, which had found the letter buried in a dump in the park.
