dinner, or a scientific meeting are the only social relaxations that
tempt him.

My sister leads a life which is not much in accordance with her simple
tastes. She is wearied of balls, operas, flower-shows, and all other
London gaieties besides; and heartily longs to be driving about the
green lanes again in her own little poney-chaise, and distributing
plum-cake prizes to the good children at the Rector's Infant School.
But the female friend who happens to be staying with her, is fond of
excitement; my father expects her to accept the invitations which he
is obliged to decline; so she gives up her own tastes and inclinations
as usual, and goes into hot rooms among crowds of fine people, hearing
the same glib compliments, and the same polite inquiries, night after
night, until, patient as she is, she heartily wishes that her
fashionable friends all lived in some opposite quarter of the globe,
the farther away the better.

My arrival from the continent is the most welcome of events to her. It
gives a new object and a new impulse to her London life.

I am engaged in writing a historical romance--indeed, it is
principally to examine the localities in the country where my story is
laid, that I have been abroad. Clara has read the first half-dozen
finished chapters, in manuscript, and augurs wonderful success for my
fiction when it is published. She is determined to arrange my study
with her own hands; to dust my books, and sort my papers herself. She
knows that I am already as fretful and precise about my literary goods
and chattels, as indignant at any interference of housemaids and
dusters with my library treasures, as if I were a veteran author of
twenty years' standing; and she is resolved to spare me every