I have great pleasure in letting you know that Miss Isola has suffered very little from
fatigue on her long journey. I am ashamed to say that I came home rather the
more tired of the two. But I am a very unpractised traveller. She has had two
tolerable nights’ sleeps since, and is decidedly not worse than when we
left you. I remembered the Magnesia according to your directions, and promise
that she shall be kept very quiet, never forgetting that she is still an
invalid. We found my Sister very well in
health, only a little impatient to see her; and, after a few hysterical tears
for gladness, all was comfortable again. We arrived here from Epping between
five and six. The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell
them. We had then in the coach a rather talkative Gentleman, but very civil,
all the way, and took up a servant maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress.
To the latter, a participation in the hospitalities of
your nice rusks and sandwiches proved agreeable, as it did to my companion, who
took merely a sip of the weakest wine and water with them. The former engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles
on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which being merely
problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my totally
un-engineer-like faculties. But when somewhere about Stanstead he put an
unfortunate question to me as to the “probability of its turning out a
good turnip season;” and when I, who am still less of an
agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a potato
ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very much upon
boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola a
laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquility for the only moment in our
journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other fellow-traveller,
who had thought he had met with a well-informed
passenger, which is an accident so desirable in a Stage Coach. We were
rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way. How I
| 1830 | AN ACROSTIC IN A CROSS ROAD | 841 |
[Added in Miss Isola’s hand:] I must just add a line to beg you will let us hear from you, my dear Mrs. Williams. I have just received the forwarded letter. Fornham we have talked about constantly, and I felt quite strange at this home the first day. I will attend to all you said, my dear Madam.
