“Is this a time for me to stay, or my aunt to receive me with any comfort? If you need any other motive to return, I must tell you that Mr. Ogle is extremely offended at your leaving him in this manner; and nothing but your immediately coming back can ever excuse you to him.
“I now implore you to return, and I call upon mamma’s sense of propriety to send you here directly. Little did I suspect that my father, my dear, beloved father, would desert me in this manner, at this distance from home. Every one is surprised. They had thought that your parental affection was the strongest sentiment of your heart, and little thought it would yield so entirely to your friendship for any one. I expect no answer but a personal one, for it is utterly impossible that you should have any motive to detain you so strong as those I have given you for your return.
“I have had a charming excursion, but I am a great deal too much discomposed to give you any particulars of it.... Pray return, my dear papa. You and mamma have ever my warmest affection, but you are rather out of favour at present; yet I am still fondly my Ittey boy’s own
“M. R. MITFORD.”
Two days later she received a letter from her father to say that he had set out for Bertram House which called forth a protest, this time to her mother, to whom she expressed surprise at her father’s singular behaviour.
“Happy as you must always be to see that dear, that most beloved of men, I am persuaded that upon this occasion you would not be pleased at his arrival. It has left me in a most awkward situation, and Mr. Ogle, whom I have just left, is extremely offended at his departure. In the name of goodness, dearest mamma, persuade my own darling to come back again directly.... It is surely a very odd thing for a young woman to be left in this strange manner. I hope you will be able to prevail upon papa to return immediately, or he will lose a very excellent and very attached old friend, and do no material service to the new one, for whose sake he seems to forget all other things and persons.... Much as I love him, it is not from a capricious affection, but from an unfeigned sense of propriety, that I desire his return. Heaven bless you, my dearest, best mamma! I am ever, with the fondest affection, your and my dear runaway’s own
“MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.
“If papa happens to open this letter, he must remember it is meant for mamma, and he must not read it.”
It must be evident, from these letters, that Miss Mitford very keenly felt the thoughtless conduct of her father, not only on account of her own predicament, but because it was creating a very bad impression as to the Doctor’s own character on the Northumbrian relatives and friends.
Fortunately the father’s absence did not put a complete stop to the programme of excursions, although it did much to mar the pleasure of them for at least one member of the party. Details of these excursions were embodied in a succession of further letters to Mrs. Mitford and included an account of a narrow escape from death upon a very steep hill; a visit to Lord Tankerville at Chillingham, where the proud owner personally drove up his famous herd of wild white cattle for his visitor’s benefit; a journey to Chevy Chase, and another dinner at Alnwick Castle. In one of these letters Miss Mitford again reverts to her father’s escapade saying, “there never was so hare-brained a thing done as his running off in this manner,” concluding with “it is impossible to describe how much I long to see my mother, my own darling mother. Nothing can exceed the affection which I am treated with here, or the pains they take to amuse me; but if I stay three weeks longer without seeing you I shall be absolutely miserable. I must never marry, that is certain, for I never should be able to support an absence of three months from my beloved parents.”