heffield, and Newcastle, thence to visit Mrs. Mitchell at Carolside;
after which I shall take my Glasgow and Edinburgh engagements, and then
come back to London. There is a rumor of Macready being about to take
Drury Lane for the winter, but I have no idea whether it is true or not.

I am sure I don't know what is to become of my poor dog Hero [a fine
Irish retriever given me by my friend]. I am almost afraid that Mrs.
Humphreys will not take him into her nice lodging. If I can't keep him
with me till I go away to America, I should beg you in the interim to
receive him, for my sake, at Ardgillan.

You cannot think with what a sense of relief at laying hold of
something _that could not lie_ I threw my arms round his neck the other
day, after ---- had left me. This is melancholy, is it not? but I
believe many poor human creatures whose hearts have been lacerated by
their (un)kind have loved brutes for their freedom from the complicated
and reflected falsehood of which the nobler nature is, alas! capable and
guilty.

Tell me if it will be inconvenient to you to take charge of Hero when I
go away. In a place where he had a wider range than this narrow little
dwelling of mine, and where his defects were not incessantly ministered
to by the adulation of an idiotical old maid besotted with the necessity
of adoring and devoting herself to something, he would be very
endurable....

[I injured one of my hands in getting out of a pony-carriage at Hawick.]
Touching my broken finger, my dear, I am sure I did take off the splints
too soon, and the recovery has been protracted in consequence; but as I
knew it would recover anyhow, and that the splints were inconvenient in
acting, and, moreover, expensive, as they compelled me to cut off the
little finger of all my white gloves, I preferred dispensing with them.
The pain, inflammation, and stiffness are almost gone, and nothing
remains but the thickening of the lower part of the finger, which makes
it look crooked, and I think may continue after the injury is healed. I
did not, I believe, break the bone at all, but tore away the ligament on
one side, that keeps the upper joint in its socket. The cold water
pumping is a capital thing, and I give it a douche every time I take my
bath. It might, perhaps, be a little better for bandaging, but will get
well without it.... A healthy body, with common attention to
common-sense, will recover, undoctored, from a great many evils. In
almost