My dear old Titty.

Why did you not tell me how your old self was: be sure tell me exactly next letter.— As for myself I am very brisk & have just been paying a call on Nancy & have been admiring her chateau, which really is very nice.— She showed two very old letters of my mother, such kind & considerate ones they were & the hand very like that of the Wedgwood family.— She also showed me a letter from Aunt Bessy which came with crockery & M. de Sevigne could not, I should think, have written more prettily on such an occasion.—

My letter will consist of odds & ends— I have not seen Baby,¹ but Caroline looks to day death-like pale & I do not like her looks— if the Baby cries, as she did last night, she stays up for hours.— I go out for a turn on the terrace several times a day & mean after Luncheon to attempt Shelton Rough,—but the fine ash-trees there have all been cut down.— I weighed yesterday before luncheon 11^st. 2 $\frac{1}{2}$ lbs:² please enter it in your book.— I had nice talk last night with the girls, as I briskened up after nine oclock, before which time I felt a good deal overwhelmed by the talking— I got into a transport over the thought of Doddy & talked like an old fool for nearly an hour about nothing else & I really believe the girls sympathised with it all.— I ended with protest, that although I had done Doddy justice, they were not suppose that Annie was not a good little soul—bless her little Botty— Absence makes me very much in love with my own dear three chickens.— I enclose the key (take care & keep it locked up) of the drawer of keys, that you may get out key of Dining room of cupboard for the tulip-bulbs for dziver. ³ Ask her to take the trouble to send here a copy of Snow’s autobiographical sketch: they all here are very curious to see it.— I presume Fanny could have no objection.—

Looking over your letter again, I see I somehow overlooked that you say you have been pretty brisk— I am very glad of it— you seem to have had a nice evening at 16.—⁴ You were quite right to send me sneers versus M^r Scott— I have amused them here with Homœopathetic stories.—⁵ My Father observes that as long as he can remember, there has always been something wonderful, more or less of the same kind, going on & there has always been people weak enough to believe & he says, slapping both knees, he supposes there always will be—so that he thinks M^r Scott no greater a fool than the other past & future fools; a more charitable belief, than I can indulge in—

M^rs. Owen called here on Monday in the most wretched spirits, crying violently & looking very thin.— she has lost the use of one arm & my Father is frightened at this, thinking it perhaps is forerunner of paralytic stroke.—⁶ By the way I told him of my dreadful numbness in my finger ends, & all the sympathy I could get, was “yes, yes exactly—tut-tut, neuralgic, exactly yes yes”— Nor will he sympathise about money “stuff & nonsense” is all he says to my fears of ruin & extravagance