once get seated at our humble board in our rural cot I
won't be afraid of any bugaboos, but I didn't want them brought up
then. I can generally depend upon Jone, but sometimes he gets a little
stubborn.

We didn't see this old person any more, and when I asked the waiter
about her the next day he said he was sure she had left the hotel, by
which I suppose he must have meant he'd got his half-crown. Her fading
away in this fashion made it all seem like a myth or a phantasm, but
when, the next morning, we got a receipt for the money Jone sent, and a
note saying the house was ready for our reception, I felt myself on
solid ground again, and to-morrow we start, bag and baggage, for
Chedcombe, which is the name of the village where the house is that we
have taken. I'll write to you, madam, as soon as we get there, and I
hope with all my heart and soul that when we see what's wrong with
it--and there's bound to be something--that it may not be anything bad
enough to make us give it up and go floating off in voidness, like a
spider-web blown before a summer breeze, without knowing what it's
going to run against and stick to, and, what is more, probably lose the
money we paid in advance.

_Letter Number Four_

CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE

Last winter Jone and I read all the books we could get about the rural
parts of England, and we knew that the country must be very beautiful,
but we had no proper idea of it until we came to Chedcombe. I am not
going to write much about the scenery in this part of the country,
because, perhaps, you have been here and seen it, and anyway my writing
would not be half so good as what you could read in books, which don't
amount to anything.

All I'll say is that if you was to go over the whole of England, and
collect a lot of smooth green hills, with sheep and deer wandering
about on them; brooks, with great trees hanging over them, and vines
and flowers fairly crowding themselves into the water; lanes and roads
hedged in with hawthorn, wild roses, and tall purple foxgloves; little
woods and copses; hills covered with heather; thatched cottages like
the pictures in drawing-books, with roses against their walls, and thin
blue smoke curling up from the chimneys; distant views of the sparkling
sea; villages which are nearly covered up by greenness, except their
steeples; rocky cliffs all green with vines, and flowers spreading and
thriving with the fervor and earnestness you might expect