She has been to Brighton, and comes home to-day. I
hear great accounts of her, and hope to find her quite well when she
arrives presently. I am afraid Mary Boyle has been praising the Boulogne
life too highly. Not that I deny, however, our having passed some very
pleasant days together, and our having had great pleasure in her visit.

You will object to me dreadfully, I know, with a beard (though not a
great one); but if you come and see the play, you will find it necessary
there, and will perhaps be more tolerant of the fearful object
afterwards. I need not tell you how delighted we should be to see
George, if you would come together. Pray tell him so, with my kind
regards. I like the notion of Wentworth and his philosophy of all
things. I remember a philosophical gravity upon him, a state of
suspended opinion as to myself, it struck me, when we last met, in which
I thought there was a great deal of oddity and character.

Charley is doing very well at Baring's, and attracting praise and reward
to himself. Within this fortnight there turned up from the West Indies,
where he is now a chief justice, an old friend of mine, of my own age,
who lived with me in lodgings in the Adelphi, when I was just Charley's
age. He had a great affection for me at that time, and always supposed I
was to do some sort of wonders. It was a very pleasant meeting indeed,
and he seemed to think it so odd that I shouldn't be Charley!

This is every atom of no-news that will come out of my head, and I
firmly believe it is all I have in it--except that a cobbler at
Boulogne, who had the nicest of little dogs, that always sat in his
sunny window watching him at work, asked me if I would bring the dog
home, as he couldn't afford to pay the tax for him. The cobbler and the
dog being both my particular friends, I complied. The cobbler parted
with the dog heart-broken. When the dog got home here, my man, like an
idiot as he is, tied him up and then untied him. The moment the gate was
open, the dog (on the very day after his arrival) ran out. Next day,
Georgy and I saw him lying, all covered with mud, dead, outside the
neighbouring church. How am I ever to tell the cobbler? He is too poor
to come to England, so I feel that I must lie to him for life, and say
that the dog is fat and happy. Mr. Plornish, much affected by this
tragedy, said: "I s'pose, pa, I shall meet the cobbler's dog" (in
heaven).

Georgy and Catherine send their best love, and I send