“Papas leaving home was a moment of sorrow / because he was not to come back to‐morrow / but we thought that the whole was a travel and now / he might come back in days” (MS I)—Read as a commentary on real life, the poem means that John James Ruskin has departed on a business journey that is not a dayʼs commute, such as Papaʼs early‐morning departure for London at the start of “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol I”, but that is a longer “travel” through the country, collecting orders for wine from clients. However, the second couplet suggests, plans have changed, and he may return home in a matter of days instead of weeks. None of the extant letters between John James and Margaret Ruskin for 1826–27 suggest an unexpected curtailment of a business trip.