among the number, flying through the air
like sea-gulls. As for me, after describing a very respectable parabola,
my angle of incidence landed me in a bonnet-maker's shop, having passed
through a large plate-glass window, and destroyed more leghorns and
dunstables than a year's pay would recompense. I have but light
recollection of the details of that occasion, until I found myself lying
in a very spacious bed at the George Inn, having been bled in both arms,
and discovering by the multitude of bandages in which I was enveloped,
that at least some of my bones were broken by the fall. That such fate
had befallen my collar-bone and three of my ribs I soon learned; and was
horror-struck at hearing from the surgeon who attended me, that four or
five weeks would be the very earliest period I could bear removal with
safety. Here then at once was a large deduction from my six months'
leave, not to think of the misery that awaited me for such a time,
confined to my bed in an inn, without books, friends, or acquaintances.
However even this could be remedied by patience, and summoning up all I
could command, I "bided my time," but not before I had completed a term
of two months' imprisonment, and had become, from actual starvation,
something very like a living transparency.

No sooner, however, did I feel myself once more on the road, than my
spirits rose, and I felt myself as full of high hope and buoyant
expectancy as ever. It was late at night when I arrived in London.
I drove to a quiet hotel in the west-end; and the following morning
proceeded to Portman-square, bursting with impatience to see my friends
the Callonbys, and recount all my adventures--for as I was too ill to
write from Northampton, and did not wish to entrust to a stranger the
office of communicating with them, I judged that they must be exceedingly
uneasy on my account, and pictured to myself the thousand emotions my
appearance so indicative of illness would give rise to; and could
scarcely avoid running in my impatience to be once more among them. How
Lady Jane would meet me, I thought of over again and again; whether the
same cautious reserve awaited me, or whether her family's approval would
have wrought a change in her reception of me, I burned to ascertain. As
my thoughts ran on in this way, I found myself at the door; but was much
alarmed to perceive that the closed window-shutters and dismantled look
of the house proclaimed them from home. I ru