By Sunday my cheeks are no longer _raw_; the furniture has stopped cracking--seeing that no one paid any attention to it, it wisely left off--and the ghosts await a fitter opportunity to pounce.
I have heard from Sir Roger--a cheerful note, dated Southampton.

If _he_ is cheerful, I may surely allow myself to be so too.

I therefore no longer compunctiously strangle any stray smiles that visit my countenance.

I have taken several drives with Barbara in my new pony-carriage--it is a curious sensation being able to order it without being subject to fathers veto--and we have skirted our own park, and have peeped through his close wooden palings at Mr.Musgrave's, have strained our eyes and stretched our necks to catch a glimpse of his old gray house, nestling low down among its elms.

(Was there ever an abbey that did not live in a hollow ?) With bated breath, lest the groom behind should overhear me, I have slightly sketched to Barbara the outline of an idea for establishing her in that weather-worn old pile--an idea which I think was born in my mind as long ago as the first evening that I saw its owner at the Linkesches Bad, and heard that he _had_ an abbey, and that it was over against my future home.
Barbara does not altogether deny the desirability of the arrangement; she is not, however, so sanguine as I as to its feasibility, and she positively declines to consent to enter actively into it until she has seen him.