talk also of a laburnum.
The border under the terrace wall is clearing away
to receive currants and gooseberry bushes, and a
spot is found very proper for raspberries.

The alterations and improvements within doors,
too, advance very properly, and the offices will
be made very convenient indeed. Our dressing table
is constructing on the spot, out of a large
kitchen table belonging to the house, for doing
which we have the permission of Mr. Husket, Lord
Lansdown's[164] painter--domestic painter, I
should call him, for he lives in the castle.
Domestic chaplains have given way to this more
necessary office, and I suppose whenever the walls
want no touching up he is employed about my lady's
face.

The morning was so wet that I was afraid we should
not be able to see our little visitor, but Frank,
who alone could go to church, called for her after
service, and she is now talking away at my side
and examining the treasures of my writing-desk
drawers--very happy, I believe. Not at all shy, of
course. Her name is Catherine, and her sister's
Caroline. She is something like her brother, and
as short for her age, but not so well-looking.

What is become of all the shyness in the world?
Moral as well as natural diseases disappear in the
progress of time, and new ones take their place.
Shyness and the sweating sickness have given way
to confidence and paralytic complaints.

* * * * *

_Evening._--Our little visitor has just left us,
and left us highly pleased with her; she is a
nice, natural, open-hearted, affectionate girl,
with all the ready civility which one sees in the
best children in the present day; so unlike
anything that I was myself at her age, that I am
often all astonishment and shame. Half her time
was spent at spillikins, which I consider as a
very valuable part of our household furniture, and
as not the least important benefaction from the
family of Knight to that of Austen.

* * * * *

There, I flatter myself I have constructed you a