"Dear Sarah,—I should not wonder if you wasn't a little surprised at neither seeing nor hearing from me before this, as I calculate you also will be at reading the date of this hepistol. The truth is, that the Captain, whose stay in England will be very short, says to me, just as I was coming off to you the night after I wrote, 'Lazenby,' says he, 'where do you go when you leave me?' So I contumaciously expressed myself in these identical words, 'Why, sir,' says I in a masculine manner, 'I am going to Blissford.' Whereupon he observed to me that he supposed I had got what the French calls a chair ah me there, and that I was likely to settle myself in the neighbourhood—so then I expostulated with him and mentioned my notion of setting up in the general line, and he laughed and said that he hoped to do that himself some day, and was quite factious upon the toepick, which after his manner the night before, rather constaminated me, as Goldfinch says in Ben Jonson's 'Beggars' Opera;' whereupon he; says, looking at me in his droll way, 'Tom,' says he, 'I shan't be long in London; hadn't you better go up with me and Mrs. M. when we are married, and stop with us till we go?'—for, mind you, he is going to take her out with him to share the toils of the champaign; and this was the very first of his directly insinuating that the thing was all settled: so I hesitates a little; and thinking of you, my dear Sarah, I says, says I, 'Sir, will you give me an hour to preponderate?'—'To be sure I will,' says the Captain. Well, I begins to think; and I calculated I might make a few pounds by stopping and paying his bills and managing his luggage, and all that, before he went. So I says to Susan—she as I wrote about in my last—'If you was me,' says I, 'what would you do in this conundrum?'—'Why,' says Susan, 'if you ask me my advice, if I was you I'd stay and go with the Captain.' So I considers a bit more; and I says to her, 'I don't much like missus as is to be.'—'Nor I,' said Susan, 'although I have knowed her longer than you; but for all that, I'm going as her maid; only to stay till they leave England for good.'—'Why,' says I, having heard her opinion of the future Mrs. Merman, and how Mrs. Gibson had gone away entirely excavated by the levity of her mistresse's behaviour, 'I had no notion you would do such a thing.'
"So Susan says to me, 'Lazenby,' says she—she calls me Lazenby, for we are quite like brother and sister now—'my old missus wishes it; and she hints something about remembering me hereafter; and so what is it?' says Susan; 'in these days, folks don't stick at trifles; and sure if Miss Millicent is good enough to be Captain Merman's wife, she is good enough to be my missus.' That seemed remarkably judicial to my comprension; and so, thinking what was good for Susan could not be interogatory to me, up I goes to the Captain, and agrees to stay with him, as I tell you, till he bids a Jew to his native land, at which perriod, dear Sarah, I hope to return to you, like the good bee who, as Pope says in 'The Deserted Village'—
'Behaves in bee-hives as behoves him,'
and bring you an affectionate art, and I should say upwards of seven pounds fourteen shillings in hard cash by way of hunney. Susan says she should like to know you, she is so much indisposed towards you by my inscription of you; and I should like you to be friends, which perhaps may be some of these days, if she comes back to that part of the country. She would be uncommon nice company for both of us, she is so candied and filantropical, and it is a great thing for a married couple to have such a friend.
"I don't know whether you have ever been in this quarter of the world, although, as I don't think you could well have got to Blissford by any other road from London, pr'aps you have; it is very wild and romantic, with a bit of a green before the door, upon which there are geese, ducks, enseterar; and Susan and I am going to take a walk, and we shall carry this letter ourselves to Artley Row, where is the Post-office, because, as I have promised the Captain not to say anything one way or the other, I thought if he saw a letter redressed to the Passonage, he might inspect something; so Susan and I agreed it would be better to go out in the dusk as if miscellaneously, and slip it in unbeknown to any body, while master and missus is enjoying their teat a teat after dinner. We go on to the meterpolis in the morning, and Susan and I go outside in the rumble-tumble, for Miss Pennefather has lent us the charriot, which I suppose I shall have to bring back, which, as I cannot do without horses, will be a very pretty incursion. I don't in course know how long the Captain will be before he goes, so do not fret. I have got your wach, which does not keep tim well, but I never look at it without thinking of you. Susan says it wants to have new hands put to it, and I shall give it to a watchmaker in town to riggle at it spontaneously on my arrival. The Captain and his mate seem very happy, which also makes me think of you, Sarah dear; she certainly is no beauty to my taste; she is a good deal in the Ottomy line, and I should say not easily pleased; but in course as yet it all goes uncommon comfortable; for, as O'Keefe says in his comical farce of 'Love for Love:'—
To fools a curse, to those a lasting boon,
What wisely spends the hunney moon.
"I hope poor Miss Fanny don't take on about the loss of master; I'm sure if I was she, and knew that he left me for the sake of Malooney's money, I should care no more about him than nothing at all—true love loves for itself a loan—don't it, dear Sarah? Oh, Sarah! Susan and I had some hot sassages and mashed potatoes for dinner to-day, and I did so think of you, and I said so; and Susan says to me, says she, 'Does your Sarah love sassages?' so I said, says I, 'Yes, where's the girl of taste as doesn't?'—and so she says again, 'Then I wish she was here'—and we both laughed like bogies. So that shows we don't forget you.
"As to Miss Fanny, there is one thing—which, if you have an opportunity upon the sly, you may incoherently hint—which may be p'rhaps a considerable revelation of her despondency, if she still cares for master; which is this—the officer which is to have the recruiting party in place of him, as Rattan told me before I came away, is taller and better-looking than master, and quite the gentleman: p'raps, if you tell Miss Fanny that, it will controvert her regret, and make her easy—I know enough of the seck, Sarah, to know that it is with females as it is with fighters—to use the words of Young in his 'Abelard and Eloisa,'—