Now I began to think from this that her conscience was beginning to trouble her for having given so fairy-like a picture of the house, and as I was afraid that she might think it her duty to bring up some disadvantages, I changed the conversation and got away as soon as I could.  When we 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 to find in the tropics, but not here—­and then, if you was to put all these points of scenery into one place not too big for your eye to sweep over and take it all in, you would have a country like that around Chedcombe.