My dear aunt Jessie,

It seems very odd to me that I should have been all this time without writing to you, but I have been so helpless and unable to do anything that I never had the energy to write, though I was often thinking of it. Now I am quite well and strong and able to enjoy the use of my legs and my baby, and a very nice looking one it is, I assure you. He has very dark blue eyes and a pretty, small mouth, his nose I will not boast of, but it is very harmless as long as he is a baby. Elizabeth went away a week too soon while he was a poor little wretch before he began to improve. She was very fond of him then, and I expect she will admire him as much as I do in the summer at Maer. He is a sort of grandchild of hers

Charles and I were both very much pleased at having a visit from Papa, and he looked comfortable in his armchair by the fire, and told us that Gower St. was the quietest place he had ever been at in his life; and Elizabeth finds it very quiet after Maer, though she had a little private dissipation of her own, dining and going to parties at the Inglis's, Dr Holland's, Georgina [Aldersonjs, etc. but she has a different sort of bustle at Maer.