rney 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 employed myself between Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the
front of my paper may inform you which you may please to Christen an
Acrostic in a Cross Road, and which I wish were worthier of the Lady
they refer to. But I trust you will plead my pardon to her on a subject
so delicate as a Lady's good _name_. Your candour must acknowledge that
they are written _strait_. And now dear Madam, I have left myself hardly
space to express my sense of the friendly reception I found at Fornham.
Mr. Williams will tell you that we had the pleasure of a slight meeting
with him on the road, where I could almost have told him, but that it
seemed ungracious, that such had been your hospitality, that I scarcely
missed the good Master of the Family at Fornham, though heartily I
should [have] rejoiced to have made a little longer acquaintance with
him. I will say nothing of our deeper obligations to both of you,
because I think we agreed at Fornham, that gratitude may be over-exacted
on the part of the obliging, and over-expressed on the part of the
obliged, person. My Sister and Miss Isola join in respects to M