This is all I have got to tell, though I have plenty more to keep, till we get to London. There, instead of my father's nice carriage, we got into a jolting, lumbering, horrid cab, with my five boxes and Percivale's little portmanteau on the top of it, and drove away to Camden Town. It _was_ to a part of it near the Regent's Park; and so our letters were always, according to the divisions of the post-office, addressed to Regent's Park, but for all practical intents we were in Camden Town. It was indeed a change from a fine old house in the country; but the street wasn't much uglier than Belgrave Square, or any other of those heaps of uglinesses, called squares, in the West End; and, after what I had been told to expect, I was surprised at the prettiness of the little house, when I stepped out of the cab and looked about me. It was stuck on like a swallow's nest to the end of a great row of commonplace houses, nearly a quarter of a mile in length, but itself was not the work of one of those wretched builders who care no more for beauty in what they build than a scavenger in the heap of mud he scrapes from the street. It had been built by a painter for himself, in the Tudor style; and though Percivale says the idea is not very well carried out, I like it much. I found it a little dreary when I entered though,--from its emptiness. The only sitting-room at all prepared had just a table and two or three old-fashioned chairs in it; not even a carpet on the floor. The bedroom and dressing-room were also as scantily furnished as they well could be. "Don't be dismayed, my darling," said my husband. "Look here,"--showing me a bunch of notes,--"we shall go out to-morrow and buy all we want,--as far as this will go,--and then wait for the rest. It will be such a pleasure to buy the things with you, and see them come home, and have you appoint their places. You and Sarah will make the carpets; won't you? And I will put them down, and we shall be like birds building their nest." "We have only to line it; the nest is built already." "Well, neither do the birds build the tree. I wonder if they ever sit in their old summer nests in the winter nights." "I am afraid not," I answered; "but I'm ashamed to say I can't tell." "It is the only pretty house I know in all London," he went on, "with a studio at the back of it. I have had my eye on it for a long time, but there seemed no sign of a migratory disposition in the bird who had occupied it for three years past. All at once he spread his wings and flew. I count myself very fortunate." "So do I. But now you must let me see your study," I said. "I hope I may sit in it when you've got nobody there." "As much as ever you like, my love," he answered. "Only I don't want to make all my women like you, as I've been doing for the last two years. You must get me out of that somehow."