d?' and she bending over him out of window, and saying in a
low voice, I DARE NOT! And then of the carriage driving away like
lightning, leaving F more philosophical than ever on the pavement." Not
till the close of September I heard of work intruding itself, in a
letter twitting me for a broken promise in not joining him: "We are
reasonably jolly, but rurally so; going to bed o' nights at ten, and
bathing o' mornings at half-past seven; and not drugging ourselves with
those dirty and spoiled waters of Lethe that flow round the base of the
great pyramid." Then, after mention of the friends who had left him,
Sheriff Gordon, the Leeches, Lemon, Egg and Stone: "reflection and
pensiveness are coming. I have NOT

'--seen Fancy write
With a pencil of light
On the blotter so solid, commanding the sea!'

but I shouldn't wonder if she were to do it, one of these days. Dim
visions of divers things are floating around me; and I must go to work,
head foremost, when I get home. I am glad, after all, that I have not
been at it here; for I am all the better for my idleness, no doubt. . . .
Roche was very ill last night, and looks like one with his face turned
to the other world, this morning. When _are_ you coming? Oh what days
and nights there have been here, this week past!" My consent to a
suggestion in his next letter, that I should meet him on his way back,
and join him in a walking-excursion home, got me full absolution for
broken promises; and the way we took will remind friends of his later
life, when he was lord of Gadshill, of an object of interest which he
delighted in taking them to see. "You will come down booked for
Maidstone (I will meet you at Paddock-wood), and we will go thither in
company over a most beautiful little line of railroad. The eight miles
walk from Maidstone to Rochester, and the visit to the Druidical altar
on the wayside, are charming. This could be accomplished on the Tuesday;
and Wednesday we might look about us at Chatham, coming home by Cobham
on Thursday. . . ."

His first seaside holiday in 1849 was at Brighton, where he passed some
weeks in February; and not, I am bound to add, without the usual
_un_usual adventure to signalize his visit. He had not been a week in
his lodgings, where Leech and his wife joined him, when both his
landlord and the daughter of his landlord went raving mad, and the
lodgers were driven away to the Bedford hotel. "If you could have