“So, you are come at last!  I began to think I should never see you.  I am so ill I can hardly speak.  I have not seen a creature the whole morning!”

“I am sorry to find you unwell,” replied Anne.  “You sent me such a good account of yourself on Thursday!”

“Yes, I made the best of it; I always do:  but I was very far from well at the time; and I do not think I ever was so ill in my life as I have been all this morning:  very unfit to be left alone, I am sure.  Suppose I were to be seized of a sudden in some dreadful way, and not able to ring the bell!  So, Lady Russell would not get out.  I do not think she has been in this house three times this summer.”

Anne said what was proper, and enquired after her husband.  “Oh!  Charles is out shooting.  I have not seen him since seven o’clock.  He would go, though I told him how ill I was.  He said he should not stay out long; but he has never come back, and now it is almost one.  I assure you, I have not seen a soul this whole long morning.”

“You have had your little boys with you?”

“Yes, as long as I could bear their noise; but they are so unmanageable that they do me more harm than good.  Little Charles does not mind a word I say, and Walter is growing quite as bad.”

“Well, you will soon be better now,” replied Anne, cheerfully.  “You know I always cure you when I come.  How are your neighbours at the Great House?”

“I can give you no account of them.  I have not seen one of them to-day, except Mr Musgrove, who just stopped and spoke through the window, but without getting off his horse; and though I told him how ill I was, not one of them have been near me.  It did not happen to suit the Miss Musgroves, I suppose, and they never put themselves out of their way.”

“You will see them yet, perhaps, before the morning is gone.  It is early.”

“I never want them, I assure you.  They talk and laugh a great deal too much for me.  Oh!  Anne, I am so very unwell!  It was quite unkind of you not to come on Thursday.”

“My dear Mary, recollect what a comfortable account you sent me of yourself!  You wrote in the cheerfullest manner, and said you were perfectly well, and in no hurry for me; and that being the case, you must be aware that my wish would be to remain with Lady Russell to the last:  and besides what I felt on her account, I have really been so busy, have had so much to do, that I could not very conveniently have left Kellynch sooner.”

“Dear me! what can you possibly have to do?”

“A great many things, I assure you.  More than I can recollect in a moment; but I can tell you some.  I have been making a duplicate of the catalogue of my father’s books and pictures.  I have been several times in the garden with Mackenzie, trying to understand, and make him understand, which of Elizabeth’s plants are for Lady Russell.  I have had all my own little concerns to arrange, books and music to divide, and all my trunks to repack, from not having understood in time what was intended as to the waggons:  and one thing I have had to do, Mary, of a more trying nature:  going to almost every house in the parish, as a sort of take-leave.  I was told that they wished it.  But all these things took up a great deal of time.”