remaining
one, which I did, ... and when your request came about a ticket for
E----, I was simply assured that it was "impossible." So, dear, you must
be, as I must be, satisfied with this decision--which I am not, for I am
very sorry, ... Lady Francis would gladly, I have no doubt, have asked
any of my friends had we wished her to do so; she did send an invitation
to Horace Wilson and his wife, but that was because he was to have acted
for her, and was only prevented by being too unwell to undertake the
part.

I am very glad that Captain Seymour likes me, as the liking is very
reciprocal. Indeed, I think our whole company presents a very favorable
specimen of our young English gentlemen: they are all of them very
young, full of good spirits, amiable, obliging, good-humored,
good-tempered, and well-mannered; in short, I think, very charming.

How shall I feel, you say, acting that part again?... My dearest
Harriet, thus much at Richmond on Monday morning; it is now Thursday
evening, and I have been crying and in a miserable state of mind and
body all day long. On Monday we acted "The Hunchback" for the third
time, and on Tuesday we all went down to Cranford, and drew long breaths
as we got into the delicious air, all fragrant with hay and honeysuckle
and syringa. I left my children at what was in posting days a famous
country inn, at about half a mile from Lady Berkeley's house, but which,
since the completion of the railroad, has become much less frequented
and important, but is quiet and comfortable and pleasant enough to make
it a very nice place of deposit for my chicks.

On Wednesday afternoon, when I went over to see them, I found F----,
pale and coughing, and heard with dismay that the measles were
pervading the whole neighborhood. I went to town that evening to act
"The Hunchback" for the last time, and was haunted by horrid visions of
my child ill and suffering, and the very first thing I met on entering
London was a child's coffin and funeral. You can better judge than I can
express how this sort of omen affected my imagination; and in this frame
of mind I went through our last representation of "The Hunchback," and
did not reach home till the white face of the morning was beginning to
look down from the ends of the streets at us.

We did not get to bed till past three, and were up again at a little
after seven, in order to take the railroad to Cranford, where we had
promised to breakfast. One of our part