Gay had become more and more on good terms with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, especially with the Duchess, who treated him as a sort of pet lap-dog. "Since I wrote last," Gay told Swift in a letter dated September 16th, 1726, "I have been always upon the ramble. I have been in Oxfordshire with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and at Petersham, and wheresoever they would carry me; but as they will go to Wiltshire[11] without me on Tuesday next, for two or three months, I believe I shall then have finished my travels for this year, and shall not go further from London than now and then to Twickenham."[12] It was as well that Gay remained in London, else probably his "Fables" would never have appeared. Gay, who had begun to compose the "Fables" in 1725, was, according to the habit of the man, not to be hurried. "I have of late been very much out of order with a slight fever, which I am not yet quite free from," he wrote to Swift in October, 1726. "If the engravers keep their word with me I shall be able to publish my poems soon after Christmas." But of course the engravers did not keep their word. Swift, a more energetic person, became almost fractious at the repeated delays in the publication, and wrote to Pope on November 17th: "How comes Gay to be so tedious? Another man can publish fifty thousand lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables."[13] And still there were delays. "My Fables are printed," he told Swift on February 18th, 1727; "but I cannot get my plates finished, which hinders the publication. I expect nothing and am likely to get nothing."[14] At last, in the spring, the volume appeared, with the imprint of J. Tonson and J. Watts, and with this dedication: "To His Highness William Duke of Cumberland these new Fables, invented for his amusement, are humbly dedicated by His Highness's most faithful and most obedient servant, John Gay." * * * * * Gay, of course, expected some reward for this courtier-like attention to the son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the poet and his friends again believed that his future was assured when they heard that Her Royal Highness had said, or at least was reported to have said, that she should "take up the hare"--an allusion to the "Fable" of "The Hare and Many Friends":-- A Hare who in a civil way, Complied with ev'ry thing, like Gay, Was known by all the bestial train, Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain. Her care was never to offend. And ev'ry creature was her friend.