and such like little
things. There is a spare bedroom of course. That I have furnished too.

I am on terms of the closest intimacy with Mrs. Samuell, the landlady,
and her brother and sister-in-law, who have a little farm hard by. They
are capital specimens of country folks, and I really think the old woman
herself will be a great comfort to my mother. Coals are dear just
now--twenty-six shillings a ton. They found me a boy to go two miles out
and back again to order some this morning. I was debating in my mind
whether I should give him eighteenpence or two shillings, when his fee
was announced--twopence!

The house is on the high road to Plymouth, and, though in the very heart
of Devonshire, there is as much long-stage and posting life as you would
find in Piccadilly. The situation is charming. Meadows in front, an
orchard running parallel to the garden hedge, richly-wooded hills
closing in the prospect behind, and, away to the left, before a splendid
view of the hill on which Exeter is situated, the cathedral towers
rising up into the sky in the most picturesque manner possible. I don't
think I ever saw so cheerful or pleasant a spot. The drawing-room is
nearly, if not quite, as large as the outer room of my old chambers in
Furnival's Inn. The paint and paper are new, and the place clean as the
utmost excess of snowy cleanliness can be.

You would laugh if you could see me powdering away with the upholsterer,
and endeavouring to bring about all sorts of impracticable reductions
and wonderful arrangements. He has by him two second-hand carpets; the
important ceremony of trying the same comes off at three this afternoon.
I am perpetually going backwards and forwards. It is two miles from
here, so I have plenty of exercise, which so occupies me and prevents my
being lonely that I stopped at home to read last night, and shall
to-night, although the theatre is open. Charles Kean has been the star
for the last two evenings. He was stopping in this house, and went away
this morning. I have got his sitting-room now, which is smaller and more
comfortable than the one I had before.

You will have heard perhaps that I wrote to my mother to come down
to-morrow. There are so many things she can make comfortable at a much
less expense than I could, that I thought it best. If I had not, I could
not have returned on Monday, which I now hope to do, and to be in town
at half-past eight.

Will you tell my father that if he could de