And all the while there will be the ever-present danger of the natural boy himself discovering suddenly, in a dumb sort of way, that his fledgling has been making (as he will most certainly put it) a little fool of itself. And then how desperately likely will he be to disown it altogether, to his lifelong incompleteness. Self-constituted missioners to schoolboys should be required to possess a licence. And it should be pretty difficult to obtain. Claire you will still find, I think, when you come home next autumn, very much of the pure child, for all her fifteen and a half years. Hockey and Henty bound her physical and mental horizons, and she writes periodical letters to Tom urging the army as the only possible profession for him. And now I must put a stop to what will seem in your bachelor eyes the prosy outpourings of the typical family man. But then your Kashmir precipices are not for all of us, you know; and I have only just been giving you what you asked for. Yours as ever, PETER HARDING. P.S.--There will of course be a spare bedroom and a well-stoked fire here against your return next October. V _To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone._ 91B HARLEY STREET, W., _March_ 23, 1910. MY DEAR HUGH, Our exchange of letters, since you finally left our fickle climate, has become so regular that I would apologise for not having written to you since the New Year, were it not that by so doing I should be distilling the poison of formality into the pot-luck of our correspondence. So I won't. I am sorry to hear that the bronchitis has been bothering you again, joining hands with _anno Domini_ to remind you of our human frailty. But your fingers, I see, have lost none of their cunning, and I immensely enjoyed your little exhibition of etchings at Obach's. Two of them I have acquired, I am glad to say, and they are looking at me as I write. And now I almost think that I shall have to take a third. It has drifted into Obach's window, and for several days past its fascination has been growing upon me. Three or four times in passing I have paused to consider it; and on each occasion it has brightened far more than Bond Street for me. It is the drawing of the little flower-girl who has forgotten her wares to feast her eyes upon the silk gown in the shop-window. And there was a time, I think, when an older, or younger, Pontrex would rather have scorned to descend upon so well-worn a theme--it would have seemed a descent in those days. And at first I thought that even now you had thrown it in among the others as a kind of sop to the easy sentiments of the majority. But I have learned better, I think, and discovered that you have treated what is, after all, the perennially beautiful with all your own scrupulous severity.