About this time Sir William paid a visit to Bath. Mary writes: “What says Bath of _Rokeby_? But Bath, I suppose, is, as to literature, politics and fashion, the echo of London. Be that as it may, I am very happy that you have arrived there, both because it brings us a step nearer, and because it so comfortably rids you of the horrors of solitude. ‘_O, la Solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut avoir quelqu’une à qui l’on puisse dire, La Solitude est une belle chose!_’ ... I most sincerely hope that we shall meet this spring in London ... and that we shall have the pleasure of renewing (I might almost say commencing) our personal acquaintance. You will find just the same plain, awkward, blushing thing whom you profess to remember.... I talk to you with wonderful boldness upon paper, and while we are seventy miles distant; but I doubt whether I shall say three sentences to you when we meet, because the ghosts of all my impertinent letters will stare me in the face the moment I see you.” A little later on Sir William paid a visit to the Mitfords at Bertram House, and Mary writes of him: “He is the kindest, cleverest, warmest-hearted man in the world.” Some of her friends fancied that, in spite of the great discrepancy in their ages, her partiality might possibly lead to a union between the friends. To their surmise Mary answers: “I shall not marry Sir William Elford, for which there is a remarkably good reason, the aforesaid Sir William having no sort of desire to marry me.... He has an outrageous fancy for my letters, and marrying a favourite correspondent would be something like killing the goose with the golden egg.” In one of Sir William’s letters he had complained of Miss Mitford’s writing being somewhat illegible, to which she responds: “So, my dear friend, you cannot make out my writing! And my honoured father cannot help you! Really this is too affronting! The two persons in all the world who have had the most of my letters cannot read them! Well, there is the secret of your liking them so much. Obscurity is sometimes a great charm. You just make out my meaning and fill it up by the force of your own imagination. The outline is mine, the colouring your own. So much the better for me.” Writing on a hot summer’s day, she says: “I have been solacing myself for this week past ‘taking mine ease’ in a hay-cock left solely for my accommodation, where Mossy and I repair every morning to perform between us the operation of reading a _good book_, I turning the leaves and _he_ going to sleep over it. It is ... the most delightful hay-cock in the world, in a snug little nook; nothing visible but lawn and plantation; whilst breathing the odours of the firs, whose fragrance this wet summer has been past anything I could have conceived.” [Illustration: BERTRAM HOUSE]