.

Accustomed as you are to the homage which men delight to render to the
Inimitable, you would be scarcely prepared for the proportions it
assumes in this northern country. Station-masters assist him to alight
from carriages, deputations await him in hotel entries, innkeepers bow
down before him and put him into regal rooms, the town goes down to the
platform to see him off, and Collins's ankle goes into the newspapers!!!

It is a great deal better than it was, and he can get into new hotels
and up the stairs with two thick sticks, like an admiral in a farce. His
spirits have improved in a corresponding degree, and he contemplates
cheerfully the keeping house at Doncaster. I thought (as I told you) he
would never have gone there, but he seems quite up to the mark now. Of
course he can never walk out, or see anything of any place. We have done
our first paper for H. W., and sent it up to the printer's.

The landlady of the little inn at Allonby lived at Greta Bridge, in
Yorkshire, when I went down there before "Nickleby," and was smuggled
into the room to see me, when I was secretly found out. She is an
immensely fat woman now. "But I could tuck my arm round her waist then,
Mr. Dickens," the landlord said when she told me the story as I was
going to bed the night before last. "And can't you do it now," I said,
"you insensible dog? Look at me! Here's a picture!" Accordingly, I got
round as much of her as I could; and this gallant action was the most
successful I have ever performed, on the whole. I think it was the
dullest little place I ever entered; and what with the monotony of an
idle sea, and what with the monotony of another sea in the room
(occasioned by Collins's perpetually holding his ankle over a pail of
salt water, and laving it with a milk jug), I struck yesterday, and came
away.

We are in a very remarkable old house here, with genuine old rooms and
an uncommonly quaint staircase. I have a state bedroom, with two
enormous red four-posters in it, each as big as Charley's room at Gad's
Hill. Bellew is to preach here to-morrow. "And we know he is a friend of
yours, sir," said the landlord, when he presided over the serving of the
dinner (two little salmon trout; a sirloin steak; a brace of partridges;
seven dishes of sweets; five dishes of dessert, led off by a bowl of
peaches; and in the centre an enormous bride-cake--"We always have it
here, sir," said the landlord, "custom of the house.") (Collins turned