Sink or Swim? , Volume II by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

Honor's first letter to her husband -- which she despatched the day but / one after she left the Paddocks -- was not written without a considerable / amount of thought and caution. It was not in this young creature's / nature to be false. On the contrary, deceit hung like a chain of lead / upon her mind -- a chain that was heavy and galling, and which, save when / she was diverted from the pain it caused her by the excitement of / dissipation, of Arthur Vavasour's society, and, alas, by the admiration / of which this true daughter of Eve well knew herself to be the object, / Honor's consciousness of her own disloyalty caused her to feel very / thoroughly unhappy and remorseful. Her letter to John -- the first which / she had ever addressed to him -- caused her even while she wrote it to / blush for shame. In it -- while she carefully avoided, or rather / ingeniously glossed over, the subject of her father's illness -- any acute / observer might have perceived that she was in no hurry to return to / Sandyshire. She had found the Colonel better, she wrote; but he was / looking ill, and complained a good deal of his head. (This, in Honor's / defence, I may remark, was no invention on her part.) Altogether, she / felt she was a comfort to her father. He was in very different / circumstances from what she (Honor) had imagined him to be. Really quite / poor, she almost thought.

They had no house, only a small lodging, and / they lived very poorly -- so poorly that Honor was quite sure John would / not like it at all; while as for mother she would not be able to exist / on the kind of food that was served up in Stanwick-street. As regarded / herself, she was -- though she could bear it very well for a / time -- extremely uncomfortable. A little attic at the very top of the / house! -- an attic with a sloping roof, and no closet to hang her dresses / in, and -- But there is no occasion to follow Mrs. John in her filling up / of this her first letter with diatribes against her own discomfort, and / with comparisons (flattering, as she hoped, to the old lady's pride) / between the wretchedness of the furniture and the poverty-stricken / nature of the food in Stanwick-street, and the luxuries and comforts / which she, the writer, had enjoyed at home. She wound up her letter (a / missive in which she had carefully abstained from any allusion to the / amusements, both present and to come, which were in readiness for her / delectation) with a hope that her father's health would continue to / improve; in which case, in a fortnight or ten days, perhaps, Colonel / Norcott would let her talk of returning to the Paddocks. Both he and his / wife showed her so much kindness and affection that, however much she / would like to be at home again, she could not think just at present of / speaking about her return.