AT BANGOR. On our arrival here, we found that the excellent Miss Roberts [mistress of the charming hotel at Bangor] had treated us exactly as the last time; i.e., "A party were just finishing dinner in our sitting-room. She was very sorry, very sorry indeed; but it would be ready for us in less than a quarter of an hour;" and we were thrust provisionally into another, where letters, books, workboxes, india-rubber shoes, and smoking-caps attested that we had no business, and suggested that their owners were in all probability the "party" finishing off their dinner in our bespoken apartment, which gave me an inclination to toss all the things in the room about, and poke the smoking-caps into the india-rubber shoes; but I didn't. What innumerable temptations I do resist! I assured Miss Roberts I was very ill-tempered, and proceeded to make assurance doubly sure by blowing her up sky-high, to which she merely replied with a Welsh "Eh! come si ha da far?" and declared that if I was in her place I should do just the same, which excited my wrath to a pitch of fury.
We had some lunch, and then set off to the quarries. The afternoon was bright and beautiful, and we were charmed with the drive and all we saw, M—— never ceasing to exclaim with fervent satisfaction at the comfortable, cheerful, healthy, well-to-do appearance of the people and their habitations—a most striking and suggestive contrast to all we had seen in poor Ireland, certainly....
We have just done dinner, and M—— is fast asleep on the sofa, with "Pilgrim's Progress" in her arms. My head aches, and my nerves twitch with fatigue and pain, but I am better than I was yesterday.
The trains from this place are very inconvenient. The one we have to go by starts from here at nine, and does not reach London till half-past seven in the evening, so we shall have a wearisome day of it....
Give my kindest love to dear Mrs. Taylor and "the girls." I shall think of them with infinite anxiety, and pray, "whenever I remember to be holy," that this dreadful war may now soon come to a close, and they be spared further anguish. [Colonel Richard Taylor, Miss S——'s nephew, was with the army in the Crimea.]
I am ever most affectionately yours,
Fanny.
Bath, Monday, December 9th.
My dearest Hal,
... You cannot think how forlorn I feel, walking in and out of our room here without farewell or greeting from you; and yet the place where you have been with me has a remembered presence of your affectionate companionship that makes it pleasant, compared to those where I go for the first time and have no such friendly association to cheer me. My disposition, as you know, is averse to all strangeness, and takes little delight in novelty; and the wandering life I lead compels me to both, forbidding all custom and the comfortable feeling of habit and use, which make me loath to leave a place where I have stayed only three days, for another where I have never stayed at all.