"Would you allow one of your retainers to look under the table and see if I left a golosh there--and if so, tell him to leave it at Swain's, to be returned by his messenger on Monday? I must have been tight, and the golosh not tight enough, and I appeared at the Duchess's with one golosh and my trousers tucked up. H.R.H. was much concerned about it, and said, 'It's all that ---- _Punch_ dinner!'" To the same: "I'm on for the 25th at the Albion and much delighted. Is it evening dress? If not, tip us a card. If you do not I shall conclude it is, and appear in full togs, which I will get out for the evening. [Illustration: O | /|\ / | \ O O O (Attenborough)] "I had really hoped to have got down to Bouverie Street yesterday, but the conviction forced itself on me as the day wore on that I should never get a cab to bring me back. I know I am a back-slider in the matter of the _Punch_ dinner (and all other dinners when I can help it). I can get thro' my work so much better after the frugal home repast, and in bed before 11 P.M. Not that I have been able to indulge in the early couch these holidays, for Hampstead, slow as it is, is a fearful place for juvenile dissipation, and parents have to sit up night after night at Xmas time. I hope you Wandsworthians have more sense." In an earlier stage of the book we fixed the period at which du Maurier's work in _Punch_ was at the height of its vitality at about 1879--and on into the early "eighties." And the artist himself seems to have had a strong feeling of increasing power at this time. In January 1880 he approached _Punch_ for a revision of the prices at which he was then working. By the courtesy of Mr. W. Laurence Bradbury I am able to quote in part from letters bearing out the inference that it was at this time that du Maurier entered into consciousness of his own worth: "_Jan._ 1, 1880. "DEAR BRADBURY, AGNEW, & Co.,--The time has come when I think I may fairly ask you to make an increase in my salary. "The quality of my work has greatly improved of late years and my popularity has grown in proportion, and these results have been obtained at great expense of thought and labour, and I find as a rule that the more time I devote to each production, the more favour it meets with from the public. "It is now a good many years (seven or eight I believe) since you were kind enough at my request to raise the payment of the quarter page....