ce
of your going. I am nursing myself up now into as
beautiful a state as I can, because I hear that
Dr. White means to call on me before he leaves the
country.

* * * * *

I have not seen Anna since the day you left us;
her father and brother visited her most days.
Edward[353] and Ben called here on Thursday.
Edward was in his way to Selborne. We found him
very agreeable. He is come back from France,
thinking of the French as one could
wish--disappointed in everything. He did not go
beyond Paris.

I have a letter from Mrs. Perigord; she and her
mother are in London again. She speaks of France
as a scene of general poverty and misery: no
money, no trade, nothing to be got but by the
innkeepers, and as to her own present prospects
she is not much less melancholy than before.

* * * * *

I enjoyed Edward's company very much, as I said
before, and yet I was not sorry when Friday came.
It had been a busy week, and I wanted a few days'
quiet and exemption from the thought and
contrivancy which any sort of company gives. I
often wonder how _you_ can find time for what you
do, in addition to the care of the house; and how
good Mrs. West[354] could have written such books
and collected so many hard words, with all her
family cares, is still more a matter of
astonishment. Composition seems to me impossible
with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of
rhubarb.

* * * * *

We do not much like Mr. Cooper's new sermons. They
are fuller of regeneration and conversion than
ever, with the addition of his zeal in the cause
of the Bible Society.

This is the last letter which we have from Jane to Cassandra. Probably
the sisters were not parted again, except when Cassandra went for a few
days to Scarlets, on the death of their uncle, Mr. Leigh Perrot, at the
end of the following March; and if Jane wrote then, it must have been in
such depression of mind and weakness of body, that her sister would not
have preserved the writing for others to see.

In the meanwhile, the autumn of 1816