Page:A memoir of Jane Austen (Fourth Edition).pdf/124

 any company but you. The quietness of it does me good. I have contrived to pay my two visits, though the weather made me a great while about it, and left me only a few minutes to sit with Charlotte Craven. She looks very well, and her hair is done up with an elegance to do credit to any education. Her manners are as unaffected and pleasing as ever. She had heard from her mother to-day. Mrs. Craven spends another fortnight at Chilton. I saw nobody but Charlotte, which pleased me best. I was shewn upstairs into a drawing-room, where she came to me, and the appearance of the room, so totally unschool-like, amused me very much; it was full of modern elegancies. 'Yours very affect$ly$.,'J. A.' The next letter, written in the following year, contains an account of another journey to London, with her brother Henry, and reading with him the manuscript of 'Mansfield Park':-

'Henrietta Street, Wednesday, March 2 (1814). 'MY DEAR CASSANDRA, 'You were wrong in thinking of us at Guildford last night we were at Cobham. On reaching G. we found that John and the horses were gone on. We therefore did no more than we had done at Farnham-sit in the carriage while fresh horses were put in, and proceeded directly to Cobham, which we