She wrote thus to Emily:--
"Dec.1st, 1843.
"This is Sunday morning. They are at their idolatrous 'messe,' and I am
here, that is in the Refectoire. I should like uncommonly to be in the
dining-room at home, or in the kitchen, or in the back kitchen. I should
like even to be cutting up the hash, with the clerk and some register
people at the other table, and you standing by, watching that I put
enough flour, not too much pepper, and, above all, that I save the best
pieces of the leg of mutton for Tiger and Keeper, the first of which
personages would be jumping about the dish and carving-knife, and the
latter standing like a devouring flame on the kitchen-floor. To complete
the picture, Tabby blowing the fire, in order to boil the potatoes to a
sort of vegetable glue! How divine are these recollections to me at this
moment! Yet I have no thought of coming home just now. I lack a real
pretext for doing so; it is true this place is dismal to me, but I cannot
go home without a fixed prospect when I get there; and this prospect must
not be a situation; that would be jumping out of the frying-pan into the
fire. _You_ call yourself idle! absurd, absurd! . . . Is papa well? Are
you well? and Tabby? You ask about Queen Victoria's visit to Brussels. I
saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and
six, surrounded by soldiers.
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