p your promise and
leave Italy as soon as you did. Tell me how you managed it. And tell
me everything about yourselves--how you are and how you feel, and
whether you look backwards or forwards with the most pleasure, and
whether the influenza has been among your welcomers to England.
Henrietta and Arabel and Daisy[18] were confined by it to their beds
for several days and the two former are only now recovering their
strength. Three or four of the other boys had symptoms which were not
strong enough to put them to bed. As for me, I have been quite well
all the spring, and almost all the winter. I don't know when I have
been so long well as I have been lately; without a cough or anything
else disagreeable. Indeed, if I may place the influenza in a
parenthesis, we have all been perfectly well, in spite of our
fishing and boating and getting wet three times a day. There is good
trout-fishing at the Otter, and the noble river Sid, which, if I liked
to stand in it, _might_ cover my ankles. And lately, Daisy and
Sette and Occyta have studied the art of catching shrimps, and soak
themselves up to their waists like professors. My love of water
concentrates itself in the boat; and this I enjoy very much, when the
sea is as blue and calm as the sky, which it has often been lately. Of
society we have had little indeed; but Henrietta had more than much
of it at Torquay during three months; and as for me, you know I don't
want any though I am far from meaning to speak disrespectfully of _Mr.
Boyds_, which has been a pleasure and comfort to me. His house is
not farther than a five minutes' walk from ours; and I often make it
_four_ in my haste to get there. Ask Eliza Cliffe to lend you the May
number of the 'Wesleyan Magazine;' and if you have an opportunity of
procuring last December's number, _do_ procure _that_. There are
some translations in each of them, which I think you will like. The
December translation is my favourite, though I was amanuensis only
in the May one. Henrietta and Arabel have a drawing master, and are
meditating soon beginning to sketch out of doors--that is, if before
the meditation is at an end we do not leave Sidmouth. Our plans are
quite uncertain; and papa has not, I believe, made up his mind whether
or not to take this house on after the beginning of next month;
when our engagement with our present landlord closes. If we do leave
Sidmouth, you know as well as I do where we shall go. Perhaps to
Boulogne! pe