I wonder whether he ever did!  He certainly was very much in earnest while the fright was on him.

Not very long after my return from this Irish trip, we finally left Penrith on the 3rd of April, 1843; and I trust that the nymph of the holy well, whose spring we had disturbed, was appeased.

My mother and I had now “the world before us where to choose.”  She had work in hand, and more in perspective.  I also had some in hand and very much more in perspective, but it was work of a nature that might be done in one place as well as another.  So when “Carlton Hill” (all of a sudden the name comes back to my memory!) was sold, we literally stood with no impedimenta of any sort save our trunks, and absolutely free to turn our faces in whatsoever direction we pleased.

What we did in the first instance was to turn them to the house of our old and well-beloved cousin, Fanny Bent, at Exeter.  There after a few days we persuaded her to accompany us to Ilfracombe, where we spent some very enjoyable summer weeks.  What I remember chiefly in connection with that pleasant time, was idling rambles over the rocks and the Capstone Hill, in company with Mrs. Coker and her sister Miss Aubrey, the daughters of that Major A. who needs to the whist-playing world no further commemoration.  The former of them was the wife and mother of Wykehamists (founder’s kin), and both were very charming women.  Ilfracombe was in those days an unpretending sort of fishing village.  There was no huge “Ilfracombe Hotel,” and the Capstone Hill was not strewed with whitey-brown biscuit bags and the fragments of bottles, nor continually vocal with nigger minstrels and ranting preachers.  The “Royal Clarence” did exist in the little town, whether under that name or not, I forget.  But I can testify from experience, acquired some forty years afterwards, that Mr. and Mrs. Clemow now keep there one of the best inns of its class, that I, no incompetent expert in such matters, know in all England.

Then, when the autumn days began to draw in, we returned to Exeter, and many a long consultation was held by my mother and I, sallying forth from Fanny Bent’s hospitable house for a tete-a-tete stroll on Northernhay, on the question of “What next?”

It turned out to be a more momentous question than we either of us imagined it to be at the time; for the decision of it involved the shape and form of the entire future life of one of us, and still more important modification of the future life of the other.  Dresden was talked of.  Rome was considered.  Paris was thought of.  Venice was discussed.  No one of them was proposed as a future permanent home.  Finally Florence came on the tapis.  We had liked it much, and had formed some much valued friendships there.  It was supposed to be economical as a place to live in, which was one main point.  For our plan was to make for ourselves for two or three years a home and way of living sufficiently cheap to admit of combining with it large plans of summer travel.  And eventually Florence was fixed on.