LETTERS OF JANE AUSTEN
of having them at a place where everything may be purchased. Pray send your opinion. Martha has as good as promised to come to us again in March. Her spirits are better than they were.
I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth. I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter.
Your Christmas gaieties are really quite surprising; I think they would satisfy even Miss Walter herself. I hope the ten shillings won by Miss Foote may make everything easy between her and her cousin Frederick. So Lady Bridges, in the delicate language of Coulson Wallop, is in for it! I am very glad to hear of the Pearsons’ good fortune. It is a piece of promotion which I know they looked forward to as very desirable some years ago, on Captain Lockyer’s illness. It brings them a considerable increase of income and a better house.
My mother bargains for having no trouble at all in furnishing our house in Bath, and I have engaged for your willingly undertaking to do it all. I get more and more reconciled to the idea of our removal. We have lived long enough in this
neighbourhood: the Basingstoke balls are cer-
