'Not perhaps as much to your taste—there is no lake under the windows, and you will be under the necessity of having all your music within doors.'
"This last coup de main ended the keen encounter of our wits, for you may believe, Matilda, it quelled all my courage to reply.
"Yet my spirits, as perhaps will appear too manifest from this dialogue, have risen insensibly, and, as it were, in spite of myself. Brown alive, and free, and in England!—embarrassment and anxiety I can and must endure. We leave this in two days for our new residence. I shall not fail to let you know what I think of these Scotch inmates, whom I have but too much reason to believe my father means to quarter in his house as a brace of honourable spies—a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, one in a cassock, the other in tartan petticoats. What a contrast to the society I would willingly have secured to myself! I shall write instantly on my arriving at our
N 2
