"
So the next day I was left to myself again with nothing to remind me
of Derrick's stay but his pictures which still hung on the wall of
our sitting-room. I made him promise to write a full, true, and
particular account of his return, a bona-fide old-fashioned letter,
not the half-dozen lines of these degenerate days; and about a week
later I received the following budget:
"Dear Sydney,--I got down to Bath all right, and, thanks to your
'Study of Sociology,' endured a slow, and cold, and dull, and
depressing journey with the thermometer down to zero, and spirits to
correspond, with the country a monotonous white, and the sky a
monotonous grey, and a companion who smoked the vilest tobacco you
can conceive. The old place looks as beautiful as ever, and to my
great satisfaction the hills round about are green. Snow, save in
pictures, is an abomination. Milsom Street looked asleep, and Gay
Street decidedly dreary, but the inhabitants were roused by my
knock, and the old landlady nearly shook my hand off. My father has
an attack of jaundice and is in a miserable state. He was asleep
when I got here, and the good old landlady, thinking the front
sitting-room would be free, had invited 'company,' i.
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