In 1881, after the death of Carlyle, Chelsea had attractions for neither husband nor wife, and with a young family growing up and calling for larger and healthier quarters, the house in Trafalgar Square was given up for one at Witley in Surrey, a hamlet close to Haslemere, which she had visited the year before, and in the midst of a country which Birket Foster had already done much to popularise, having resided at a beautiful house there for many years. * * * * * The water-colours of this first period, namely from 1875 to 1880, that are reproduced here, are the following:-- [Illustration: 8. THE YOUNG CUSTOMERS _From the Water-colour in the possession of Miss Bell._ Painted 1875.] The drawing by which, as we have said, Mrs. Allingham made her name, obtained election at the Society of Painters in Water Colours, was represented at her first appearance there in 1875, and also at the Paris Exposition in 1878, and through which she obtained the recognition of Ruskin, who thus wrote concerning it in the _Notes_ which he was at that time in the habit of compiling each year on the Summer Exhibitions. It happens curiously that the only drawing of which the memory remains with me as a possession out of the Old Water-Colour Exhibition of this year--Mrs. Allingham's "Young Customers"--should not only be by an accomplished designer of woodcuts, but itself the illustration of a popular story. The drawing, with whatever temporary purpose executed, is for ever lovely--a thing which I believe Gainsborough would have given one of his own paintings for, old fashioned as red-tipped daisies are, and more precious than rubies. Later on, in 1883, in his lectures at Oxford on Mrs. Allingham he again referred to it as "The drawing which some years ago riveted, and ever since has retained the public admiration--the two deliberate housewives in their village toyshop, bent on domestic utilities and economies, and proud in the acquisition of two flat irons for a farthing--has become, and rightly, a classic picture, which will have its place among the memorable things in the Art of our time, when many of its loudly-trumpeted magnificences are remembered no more." The black-and-white drawing on which it was founded, a somewhat thin and immature performance, was one of twelve illustrations made by Mrs. Allingham for Mrs. Ewing's _A Flat Iron for a Farthing_,[6] where it appears as illustrating the following episode. It will be seen that Mrs. Allingham's version of the story differs in many points from that of the authoress, which is thus told by Reginald, the only son:--