have patience to read that papa has seen and likes another house in
Devonshire Place, and that he _may_ take it, and we _may_ be settled
in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business
indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of
houses, that the pivot is broken--and now they won't turn any more.
All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more
comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and taken for rather
longer than a week at a time. Perhaps, after all, we are quite as well
_sur le tapis_ as it is. It is a thousand to one but that the feeling
of four red London walls closing around us for seven, eleven, or
twenty-five years, would be a harsh and hard one, and make us cry
wistfully to 'get out.' I am sure you will look up to your mountains,
and down to your lakes, and enter into this conjecture.

Talking of mountains and lakes is itself a trying thing to us poor
prisoners. Papa has talked several times of taking us into the country
for two months this summer, and we have dreamt of it a hundred times
in addition; but, after all, we are not likely to go I dare say. It
would have been very delightful--and who knows what may take place
next summer? We may not absolutely _die_, without seeing a tree.
Henrietta has seen a great many. You will have heard, I dare say, of
the enjoyment she had in her week at Camden House. She seems to have
walked from seven in the morning to seven at night; and was quite
delighted with the kindness within doors and the sunshine without. I
assure you that, fresh as she was from the air and dew, she saluted us
amidst the sentiment of our sisterly meeting just in this way--it was
almost her first exclamation--'What a very disagreeable smell there is
here!' And this, although she had brought geraniums enough from Camden
to perfume the Haymarket!...