wed away in the cellar, and I'm not dragging them out and looking at
them all the time. That's something, isn't it?

I ought to give you all my impressions of London, I suppose; but I've
grown so used to the place that I don't think I have any now. I seem to
have been here years and years.

You will see by the address that Mr. Faucitt has not yet sold his
inheritance. He expects to do so very soon, he tells me--there is a
rich-looking man with whiskers and a keen eye whom he is always lunching
with, and I think big deals are in progress. Poor dear! he is crazy to
get away into the country and settle down and grow ducks and things.
London has disappointed him. It is not the place it used to be. Until
quite lately, when he grew resigned, he used to wander about in a
disconsolate sort of way, trying to locate the landmarks of his youth.
(He has not been in England for nearly thirty years!) The trouble is, it
seems, that about once in every thirty years a sort of craze for change
comes over London, and they paint a shop-front red instead of blue, and
that upsets the returned exile dreadfully. Mr. Faucitt feels like Rip
Van Winkle. His first shock was when he found that the Empire was a
theatre now instead of a music-hall. Then he was told that another
music-hall, the Tivoli, had been pulled down altogether. And when on top
of that he went to look at the baker's shop in Rupert Street, over which
he had lodgings in the eighties, and discovered that it had been turned
into a dressmaker's, he grew very melancholy, and only cheered up a
little when a lovely magenta fog came on and showed him that some things
were still going along as in the good old days.

I am kept quite busy at Laurette et Cie., thank goodness. (Not being a
French scholar like you--do you remember Jules?--I thought at first that
Cie was the name of the junior partner, and looked forward to meeting
him. "Miss Nicholas, shake hands with Mr. Cie, one of your greatest
admirers.") I hold down the female equivalent of your job at the
Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd.--that is to say, I'm a
sort of right-hand woman. I hang around and sidle up to the customers
when they come in, and say, "Chawming weather, moddom!" (which is
usually a black lie) and pass them on to the staff, who do the actual
work. I shouldn't mind going on like this for the next few years, but
Mr. Faucitt is determined to sell. I don't know if you are like that,
but every other English