Our journey back to Cheltenham was much more quiet than it had been to Worcester, for the royal party too; another route to see Malvern hills, and we went straight forward.
Miss Planta having now caught the influenza, suffered very much all the way, and I persuaded her immediately to lie down when we got to Fauconberg Hall. She could not come down to dinner, which I had alone. The Princess Elizabeth came to me after it, with her majesty’s permission that I might go to the play with my usual party; but I declined it, that I might make some tea for poor Miss Planta, as she had no maid, nor any creature to help her. The princess told me they were all going first upon the walks, to promener till the play time.
I sat down to make my solitary tea, and had just sent up a basin to Miss Planta, when, to my equal surprise and pleasure, Mr. Fairly entered the room. “I come now,” he said, “to take my leave.”
They were all, he added, gone to the walks, whither he must in a few minutes follow them, and thence attend to the play, and the next morning, by five o’clock, be ready for his post-chaise. Seeing me, however, already making tea, with his Usual and invariable sociability he said he would venture to stay and partake, though he was only come, he gravely repeated, to take his leave.
“And I must not say,” cried I, “that I am sorry you are going, because I know so well you wish to be gone that it makes me wish it for you myself.”
“No,” answered he, “you must not be sorry; when our friends are going to any joy. We must think of them, and be glad to part with them.”
Readily entering the same tone, with similar plainness of truth I answered, “No, I will not be sorry you go, though miss you at Cheltenham I certainly must.”
“Yes,” was his unreserved assent, “you will miss me here, because I have spent my evenings with you; but you will not long remain at Cheltenham.”
“Oime!” thought I, you little think how much worse will be the quitting it. He owned that the bustle and fatigue of this life was too much both for his health and his spirits.
I told him I Wished it might be a gratification to him, in his toils, to hear how the queen always spoke of him; With what evident and constant complacency and distinction. “And you may credit her sincerity,” I added, “Since it is to so little a person as me she does this, and when no one else is present.”