[1]

Ap. 19th [date added later but apparently wrong:] 1868

Down Beckenham Kent

Dr. G. What a nice pen….

[1v]

gratitude to a for your offer about the cat – u are a good boy & that I will say 4 u – 3 days ago I shd have accepted ur offer with rapture but now virtue is going to be its own reward & I'm going to refuse. The impediment is an ugly little claws wh. I have acquired & who has wound herself round my heartstrings so that I shdn't like to send her off - & I don't think I had better have 2 pets – so many thanks & I wont bother u.

F. [Francis] went back to Cambridge today along of his snails & hedgehog – this last after some though he settled to chloroform – thinking it

[2]

wd. be a pleasant companion dead then living. Horace will be here when u come home.

Father hasn't been getting on or at least I don't kno' that he has until today when he certainly is more comfortable.

He was driven up to the greenhouse on the truck & was none the worse. The thing is the immense bruise wh. is partly inflamed - & he thinks some nerve is crushed – so I am glad to say Paget is coming down. tho' Father is low at the thoughts & thinks Paget will think him an

[2v]

old ass for bothering him – but it is much more comfortable. […]

[Emma recorded in her diary that Paget came on 21 April 1869.]