godmersham park, thursday (sept. 23).

my dearest cassandra,—thank you five hundred and forty times for the exquisite piece of workmanship which was brought into the room this morning, while we were at breakfast, with some very inferior works of art in the same way, and which i read with high glee, much delighted with everything it told, whether good or bad. it is so rich in striking intelligence that i hardly know what to reply to first. i believe finery must have it.

i am extremely glad that you like the poplin. i thought it would have my mother's approbation, but was not so confident of yours. remember that it is a present. do not refuse me. i am very rich.

mrs. clement is very welcome to her little boy, and to my congratulations into the bargain, if ever you think of giving them. i hope she will do[208] well. her sister in lucina, mrs. h. gipps, does too well, we think. mary p. wrote on sunday that she had been three days on the sofa. sackree does not approve it.

well, there is some comfort in the mrs. hulbart's not coming to you, and i am happy to hear of the honey. i was thinking of it the other day. let me know when you begin the new tea and the new white wine. my present elegances have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. i am still a cat if i see a mouse.

i am glad you like our caps, but fanny is out of conceit with hers already; she finds that she has been buying a new cap without having a new pattern, which is true enough. she is rather out of luck to like neither her gown nor her cap, but i do not much mind it, because besides that i like them both myself, i consider it as a thing of course at her time of life,—one of the sweet taxes of youth to choose in a hurry and make bad bargains.

i wrote to charles yesterday, and fanny has had a letter from him to-day, principally to make inquiries about the time of their visit here, to which mine was an answer beforehand; so he will probably write again soon to fix his week. i am best pleased that cassy does not go to you.

now, what have we been doing since i wrote last? the mr. k.'s[24] came a little before dinner[209] on monday, and edward went to the church with the two seniors, but there is no inscription yet drawn up. they are very good-natured, you know, and civil, and all that, but are not particularly superfine; however, they ate their dinner and drank their tea, and went away, leaving their lovely wadham in our arms, and i wish you had seen fanny and me running backwards and forwards with his breeches from the little chintz to the white room before we went to bed, in the greatest of frights lest he should come upon us before we had done it all. there had been a mistake in the housemaid's preparation, and they were gone to bed.

he seems a very harmless sort of young man, nothing to like or dislike in him,—goes out shooting or hunting with the two others all the morning, and plays at whist and makes queer faces in the evening....