much worth: that my mother is dead, "the late Mrs. Leicester," and my father's face probably past all frowning now. Nay, they probably are semi-dissolved bodies together!' On which thought I fell asleep, and had a horrible dream of propping up the body of my father, great, naked, flabby, which would come upon me. This dream disturbed me for the whole of the next day with a feeling of flabby death near and not near me, by and not by me, my father and not my father.
The morning after that, at breakfast, Armstrong, who sat next me, getting up to look at the letters when they were brought in, returned and threw one on to my plate. It was addressed to B. Leicester, Esq., in a thin scratchy hand, and the envelope was large and oblong and of glazed white paper. In a little I opened it, supposing it to be from Mr. Cholmeley, and rightly. It ran like this:
'The Myrtles, Seabay, Isle of Wight,
'Dear Mr. Leicester,—I daresay that by this time, my name, Cholmeley, will convey some impression to your mind; for I must suppose that your guardian. Colonel James, has not left you in complete ignorance of the correspondence that has been passing between us.
'I prefer coming at once to the point, or rather one of the points; for there are two. The first is, some explanation of what you must suppose to have been nothing short of absolute neglect of yourself on my part; the second is, as you are probably aware, to ask you to confer upon me the pleasure of your society here for the first fortnight in August. I should, indeed, have been happy to have given you a somewhat larger invitation; but, as my health requires me to hasten south again to those parts which alone seem able to make my wretched old body an endurable habitation, you will see that this is impossible.
'I now return to the first point. I saw but very little of my sister, Isabel, your mother; for having very early shown a decided inclination for the study of the classics, that chiefest laborum dulce lenimen, and my grandfather, having himself been a scholar of no despicable pretensions (although of a somewhat more artificial, if sounder, character, than those at present in vogue), and moreover money not being a want
to us, I naturally desired, and at last gained, my father's