A rushing week it was, into which my sister and I crammed much enthralling shopping. I can see now Joe’s reproachful face at the door of the café where we had kept him waiting half an hour for _déjeuner_ after his hot and tiring morning’s work at the _Salon_. I made a shameless excuse to the effect that we had secured many “occasions” (bargains). And as I gave him a toothbrush which he had asked me to buy, he said: “Is this an ‘occasion’ too? I’d rather have a punctual meal than an occasional toothbrush!” Merry hours but very far from idle ones, and he reaped an additional and unexpected reward for his labours when we got home. We had been bidden to a cricket match at his old school the day after our return, where, in virtue of his old rank of Captain of the Eleven, he was to play as a visitor; and I seem to see the boyish blush of satisfaction with which he told his beloved master--Dr. Birkbeck Hill--that it was he and no leader-writer on the _Times_, as was rumoured, who was writing those humorous articles on the newspapers for the _World_. My husband has told so much of the tale of his early journalistic days in his _Eminent Victorians_ that I find little to add; but I remember a curious incident in the fine old room at Great Russell Street when George Hake--Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s secretary--came one day, ostensibly “on his own,” to have a talk with him on the series of papers on painters of the day, appearing above the signature of “Ignotus,” but of which the authorship had leaked out. Joe has told, in _Coasting Bohemia_, of the rift in his friendship with Rossetti over these articles, and a sad tale it is. Mr. Hake fancied that Rossetti would like to see his friend’s bride, but, alas! he was taking too much on himself, for the visit never came off. But Rossetti was at that time already an invalid and was not to be counted upon. It must have been some time after this that the French proprietors of that luxurious publication, _L’Art_, invited Joe to run a London office for its sale, in connection with which he afterwards started an English version--_Art and Letters_--edited and largely written by himself. Many funny incidents group themselves around the person of the French proprietor, whose English, though insistently fluent, was of the lamest, and I think Joe sometimes led him on in the expectation of some pleasant malapropism. “How are you now?” he would ask, when the poor gentleman had “suffered the sea.” “Only ’alf and ’alf, my friend,” the Frenchman would reply. “But I must back tonight. I make my trunk at four.” And his apt _mots_ on the super-sensitive lady-assistant who “always begin to tear for nothing” and “forgive never man that he ’ave not married her” afforded Joe continual delight.