To MISS RUXTON.
PAKENHAM HALL, Jan. 21.
We, my mother, Lovell, Fanny, and I, came here yesterday, glad to see
Lord Longford surrounded by his friends in old Pakenham Hall hospitable
style,—he always cordial, unaffected, and agreeable. The house has been
completely new-modelled, chimneys taken down from top to bottom, rooms
turned about from lengthways to broad-ways, thrown into one another, and
out of one another, and the result is that there is a comfortable
excellent drawing-room, dining-room, and library, and the bedchambers
are admirable. Mrs. Smyth, of Gaybrook, and her daughter are here, and
Mr. Knox; and I have been so lucky as to be seated next to him at dinner
yesterday, and at breakfast this morning; he is very agreeable when he
speaks, and when he is silent it is "silence that speaks."
Lady Longford has been very attentive to us. She has the finest and most
happy open-faced children I ever saw—not the least troublesome, yet
perfectly free and at their case with the company and with their
parents.
A box will be left in Dublin for you on Monday morning. There is no
telling you how happy I have been getting ready and packing and fussing
about the said box for you, flying about the house from the library to
the garret. And all for what? When Sophy, whom I beg to be the unpacker, opens it, you will see a certain dabbed-up crooked pasteboard tray in which are four frills for you: I hemmed every inch of them myself, to give them the only value they could have in your eyes.