t night, and we are now in daily expectation of
departing for Weybridge, so that the last fortnight has been one
continual bustle.

I have had another reason for not writing to you, which I have only
just made up my mind to tell you. Dick ---- has been taking my
likeness, or rather has begun to do so. I thought, dear H----, that
you would like to have this sketch, and I was in hopes that the
first letter you received in Ireland from me would contain it; but,
alas! Dick is as inconstant and capricious as a genius need be, and
there lies my fac-simile in a state of non-conclusion; they all
tell me it is very like, but it does appear to me so pretty that I
am divided between satisfaction and incredulity. My father, I
lament to say, left us last night in very bad spirits. I never saw
him so depressed, and feared that my poor mother would suffer
to-day from her anxiety about him; however, she is happily pretty
well to-day, and I trust will soon, what with Weybridge and
pike-fishing, recover her health and spirits entirely.

I suspect this will be the last summer we shall spend at Weybridge,
as we are going to give our cottage up, I believe. I shall regret
it extremely for my mother; it is agreeable to and very good for
her. I do not care much about it for myself; indeed, I care very
little where I go; I do not like leaving any place, but the tie of
habit, which is quickly formed and strong in me, once broken, I can
easily accommodate myself to the next change, which, however, I
always pray may be the last. My mother and myself had yesterday a
serious, and to me painful, conversation on the necessity of not
only not hating society, but tolerating and mixing in it. She and
my father have always been disinclined to it, but their
disinclination has descended to me in the shape of active dislike,
and I feel sometimes inclined to hide myself, to escape sitting
down and communing with my fellow-creatures after the fashion that
calls itself social intercourse. I can't help fancying (which,
however, _may_ be a great mistake) that the hours spent in my own
room reading and writing are better employed than if devoted to
people and things in which I feel no interest whatever, and do not
know how to pretend the contrary.

I must do justice to my mother, howev