’You ask whether the dear granny is happy.  You know she is all elasticity, and things are pleasanter here to her than to me, but I do not think she enjoys life as she did at home.  It is hard to have her whole mission reduced to airing those four horses.  We have tormented my uncle out of making us use more than two at a time, by begging for six and the Lord Mayor’s coach; but aired alternately they must be, and we must do it, and by no road but what the coachman chooses; and this does not seem to me to agree with her like trotting about the town on her errands.  There is no walking here, excepting in the pleasure-ground, where all my grandfather’s landscape-gardening has been cut up so as to be a mere vexation to her.  The people round are said to be savage and disaffected, and the quarter of a mile between the park and the village is subject to miners going home.  They did once holloa at me, and orders were issued that I should walk no more.  I believe that if they saw me fearless, and coming among them for friendly purposes, they would leave off hooting; but the notion frightens granny, so I am a prisoner.  They are the people to think it a mockery to be visited by a lady bedizened as I am, and stuck up in a carriage; so we can do very little except through Mr. Danvers, and my uncle is always discontented at the sight of him, and fancies he is always begging.  A little sauciness on my part has the best effect when anything is wanted, for my uncle is very kind to me in his own fashion, which is not mine.

’We have made something of a nest in the last of the suite of rooms, the only one habitably small; but it is wonderful where all the time in the day goes.  My uncle likes me to ride with him in the morning, and I have to help granny air the horses in the afternoon; and in the evening, when we are lucky enough to dine alone, I play them both asleep, unless they go to backgammon.  Think of granny reduced to that!  We should be very happy when he is detained in his study, but that granny thinks it is bad for him.  Dear granny!

I see the object of her life is to win him back to serious thoughts.  She seems to think of him like a schoolboy who must be lured to find home pleasanter than idle ways; and she begs me quite sadly to bear with him, and make him happy, to prevent him from longing after his counting-house at Lima.  She tried to make him promise never to go back, but he has only promised never to go while she lives, and she seems to think it would be fatal, and to charge all his disregard of religious matters upon herself for having sent him out.  If you could see her pleased smile when we extort a subscription, or when she gets him to church; but when those South American mails come in on Sundays—­alas!  Those accounts are his real element, and his moments of bliss are over the ‘Money-market and City intelligence,’ or in discussing railway shares with Sir Andrew.  All the rest is an obstinate and dismal allegiance