Sampson that I was so busy sweeping a crossing just now that I was afraid I wouldn’t have time to paint her daughter. When I have done these cows, if they turn out really well, perhaps I’ll send the best of them to Mrs. Sampson and tell her that that’s the best portrait of her daughter I was capable of doing. Some people in Paris like my pictures very much and two of them have been hanging in an exhibition and people have to pay to go in and see them. I sold one of them for fifty pounds and therefore I enclose a little bit of paper which if you take it to the right person will help you buy enough sweets to make yourself sick for a whole week. Don’t tell your mother I’ve done this. Your sister Mary is breaking out into spots. She has five on her forehead. I think it’s because she sucks her pencil so hard. Your sister Barbara tumbled all the way down the stairs yesterday but didn’t seem to mind. She is the best of the family and shortly I intend to invite her into the studio and let her lick my paint box. Outside my window at this moment there is an apple tree and the hills are red, the same colour as the apples. Someone is burning leaves and the smoke turns red as it gets high enough and then comes white again when it gets near the moon, which is a new one and exactly like one of your Aunt Amy’s eyelashes. I am getting so fat that I think of living in a barrel, as a very famous man about whom I’ll tell you one day, used to do. I think I’ll have a barrel with a lid on the top of it so that when people come into the studio whom I don’t want to see, I shall just shut the lid and they won’t know I’m there. I think I’ll have the barrel painted bright blue. Your dog thinks there’s a rat just behind my bookcase. He lies there for hours at a time purring like a kettle. There may be a rat but knowing life as well as I do there never is a rat where you most expect one. That’s one of the things your father hasn’t learnt yet. He is writing his sermon in his study. If he knew there weren’t any rats he wouldn’t write so many sermons. I’ve been reading a very funny book by a man called France, and the funny thing is that he is also a Frenchman. Isn’t that a funny thing? You shall read it one day when you’re older and then you’ll understand your Uncle Samuel better than you do now. Well, good-bye. I hope you’re enjoying yourself and haven’t entirely forgotten your UNCLE. P.S.—I promise you that the lid shall never be on the barrel when you’re there, and if you don’t get too fat, there’s room for two inside.