"I--I--I ap--appreciate your feelings--I--I--should feel the same myself. I am off to Oxford!" and he went. [Illustration: Handwritten note] I sent him drawings as they were finished, and each parcel brought back a budget of letter-writing, each page being carefully numbered. This is the top of page 5 in his 49,874th letter. I am not sure if I received all the remaining 49,873 letters in the seven years. To meet him and to work for him was to me a great treat. I put up with his eccentricities--real ones, not sham like mine.--I put up with a great deal of boredom, for he was a bore at times, and I worked over seven years with his illustrations, in which the actual working hours would not have occupied me more than seven weeks, purely out of respect for his genius. I treated him as a problem, and I solved him, and had he lived I would probably have still worked with him. He remunerated me liberally for my work; still, he actually proposed that in addition I should partake of the profits; his gratitude was overwhelming. "I am grateful; and I feel sure that if _pictures_ could sell a book 'Sylvie and Bruno' would sell like wildfire." Perhaps the most pleasant confession I have to make is my fondness for children. They always interest and amuse me more than "grown-ups." The commonplace talk is to them unknown; it is full of surprises. Perhaps the nursery's record of my family is not longer or any more interesting than the sayings and doings of the youngsters of any other family; still a few extracts may interest those who, like myself, are interested in first impressions. My eldest, just entering on his teens, had as companions two brothers and one sister. Hearing there was an addition to this little family group, he, dressed in flannels, ran into my studio, bat in hand, "Papa, is it a boy or a girl?" "A boy." "Oh, I am so glad. I do want a wicket-keeper, and Dorothy can't wicket-keep a bit." [Illustration: "I DO WANT A WICKET-KEEPER!"] A stoutly-made little fellow of eight, to his mother, who happened to be extremely thin: "Oh, mother, I do believe you must be the very sweetest woman in the world!" "Thanks very much, Lawrence. But why so affectionate? What do you want?" "I don't want anything. I only know you must be the very sweetest woman in the world." "Really, you are too flattering. Why this sudden outburst of affection?" "Well, you know, I've been thinking over the old, old saying, 'The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat.'" Children, I think, have the art of "leading up" to jokes better than adults. They hear some strange remark, they naturally analyse it, and it suggests an application. For instance, this brat possibly objected to some portion of meat at table. His mother had reminded of the old saying, "The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat." Thin mother,--there's the application. One of my youngsters ran into the drawing-room at five o'clock tea. A lady visitor thus addressed him: