Mary Ross has put it into Aunt's head that it would be the best plan in the world for us to pass the winter in the Isle of Bute. Living is for nothing. As this is a plan of economy I dare say nothing, but I am very unhappy, I am very unhappy indeed, for I feel my heart sink into my shoes when I think how long it may be before I again see you or any of you.... We shall stay here till November, when we shall go to our little Bute. Our society there is likely to be confined to Mrs. Muir, the factor's wife, a quick, lively, little body, I am told, which sounds awfully bustling and pert, an occasional King's officer in search of smugglers, and the master of the steam-boat. I have liked Scotland upon the whole, in short I had determined to make the best of it, and one always partly succeeds in those cases, yet I don't like the people; they are very hospitable, but _du reste_, they appear to me stubborn, opinionated, cold, and prejudiced. The women are either see-saw and dismal, or bustling and pert, and appear to me to be generally ignorant, which I did not expect, and the minute gossip they keep us is something I cannot describe.
DEAREST THERESA, Please to write again directly to say how you are going on. I take your Grove[135] to be equal to my Nocton[136] in matter of bore, and that being the case, if one is to have an illness, one may as well have it at those houses. It fills up the time. My ague is subsiding, but I have fits of it occasionally and hate it very much. I had one yesterday, which even moved George's strong heart to pity, though he has such a contempt for illness that I keep it all very snug. I am going to Langley to-day, and that is another thing which makes him so _scrapey_ that I am writing in his room in order to talk him over in my most insinuating and winning manner between the sentences of my letter.
He and I go on such different tacks about town and country, that we make our plans, and talk them over for half-an-hour before I recollect that we are working for different aims. He thinks every day spent in the country by anybody who does not shoot is so much time wasted, and I happen to think every day spent in London is a mistake, and I was roused to the sense of our different views by his saying, "Well, but I want you to gain another day in London, and you can write to Louisa that you were not well yesterday, and then stay here, and I will go to the play with you to-night." Such an iniquitous plot! And I am about as fit to go to the play as to go in a balloon.