of this transitory
world; but still there was an improvement, and it is confirmed to-day.
White lime is to be seen in kitchens, the bath-room is gradually
resolving itself from an abstract idea into a fact--youthful, extremely
youthful, but a fact. The drawing-room encourages no hope whatever, nor
the study. Staircase painted. Irish labourers howling in the
school-room, but I don't know why. I see nothing. Gardener vigorously
lopping the trees, and really letting in the light and air. Foreman
sweet-tempered but uneasy. Inimitable hovering gloomily through the
premises all day, with an idea that a little more work is done when he
flits, bat-like, through the rooms, than when there is no one looking
on. Catherine all over paint. Mister McCann, encountering Inimitable in
doorways, fades obsequiously into areas, and there encounters him again,
and swoons with confusion. Several reams of blank paper constantly
spread on the drawing-room walls, and sliced off again, which looks like
insanity. Two men still clinking at the new stair-rails. I think they
must be learning a tune; I cannot make out any other object in their
proceedings.

Since writing the above, I have been up there again, and found the young
paper-hanger putting on his slippers, and looking hard at the walls of
the servants' room at the top of the house, as if he meant to paper it
one of these days. May Heaven prosper his intentions!

When do you come back? I hope soon.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Charles Dickens.]

CLIFTON, _November 13th, 1851._

MY DEAREST KATE,

I have just received your second letter, and am quite delighted to find
that all is going on so vigorously, and that you are in such a
methodical, business-like, and energetic state. I shall come home by the
express on Saturday morning, and shall hope to be at home between eleven
and twelve.

We had a noble night last night. The room (which is the largest but one
in England) was crammed in every part. The effect of from thirteen to
fourteen hundred people, all well dressed, and all seated in one
unbroken chamber, except that the floor rose high towards the end of the
hall, was most splendid, and we never played to a better audience. The
enthusiasm was prodigious; the place delightful for speaking in; no end
of gas; another hall for a dressing-room; an immense stage; and every
possible conven