grandmamma, Mary Jane, and myself. Yalden's coach cleared off the rest yesterday. I am glad you recollected to mention your being come home.[1] My heart began to sink within me when I had got so far through your letter without its being mentioned. I was dreadfully afraid that you might be detained at Winchester by severc illness, confined to your bed perhaps, and quite unable to hold a pen, and only dating from Steventon in order, with a mistaken sort of tenderness, to deceive me. But now I have no doubt of your being at home. I am sure you would not say it so seriously unless it actually were so. We saw a countless number of post-chaises full of boys pass by yesterday morning [2]-full of future heroes, legislators, fools, and villains. You have never thanked me for my last letter, which went by the cheese, I cannot bear not to be thanked. You will not pay us a visit yet of course; we must not think of it. Your mother must get well first, and you must go to Oxford and not be elected; after that a little change of scene may be good for you, and your physicians I hope will order you to the sea, or to a house by the side of a very considerable pond.[3] Oh! it rains again. It beats against the window. Mary Jane and I have been wet through once already
- ↑ It seems that her young correspondent, after dating from his home, had been so superfluous as to state in his letter that he was returned home, and thus to have drawn on himself this banter.
- ↑ The road by which many Winchester boys returned home ran close to Chawton Cottage.
- ↑ There was, though it exists no longer, a pond close to Chawton Cottage, at the junction of the Winchester and Gosport roads.
