Sometimes S. J.-B.’s willing assistance was of a kind that involved no small labour and anxiety. If a friend was shy and gifted and poor, capable of producing work not yet recognized as marketable, S. J.-B. was always ready to be the middleman. She would write round to well-to-do friends enlisting their interest, do up samples of the work for inspection, and (most serious of all!) undertake the responsibility of receiving the samples safe back again. “Put the responsibility on me,” she used to say cheerily in after life, “my shoulders are broad enough”; and there is no doubt she began to say this—if not in so many words— before the age of 20. People got into the way of trusting her to _see a thing through_, of assuming that it was her _métier_ to be competent and to organize, of leaving to her the heavy end of the stick: and no doubt she enjoyed it all and learned much from it, though, when taken in addition to her regular work, it was terribly hard on her hasty temper and “irritable brain.” “You must be very thankful to be a medium of helping so many,” writes her Mother,—“a great honour, I consider it, pleasure without alloy.” But in the same letter she says, “Sad, sad weather for you to knock about in. Darling, don’t risk your health.” “I would not and could not speak” (after parting from you), writes Ellie. “I wish I was not such a silly fool, but I could not help it and never can, if I have to leave you.... I wonder if you have wished for me, if it was only to scold and fight with; but what I wish most of all is that you would give up fighting. I would do anything for you if I could only make even a slight alteration.... I do with all my heart wish that you would try to keep in that temper of yours.” Noble Ellie!—“Walks upright beside me, a companion, a guide, and gives me a hand.” S. J.-B. rarely, if ever, expected her friends to do her the same kind of service; but, if they became very dear, she did demand—more or less unconsciously to herself—a definite _quid pro quo_. In her big masterful way she would proceed to absorb their lives into her own; to establish a subtle growing claim that was not easy to resist. She was splendidly loyal herself, and the loyalty she exacted in return, though at first glance an easier thing, involved more than she was in any degree aware of. As life went on people found it increasingly difficult to disagree with her: many simply ran away—_se sauvaient_, as the French say; and yet it was only when in the last resort one resisted her to the face for conscience sake in some matter very dear to her heart,—that one really gauged the greatness of her nature.