Yes, I'll come to Cambridge then or thereabout, if God doesn't put a real tangible spoke in my wheel. My terms with my parents are admirable; we are a very united family. Good-bye, _mon cher, je ne puis plus écrire_. I have not quite got over a damned affecting part in my story this morning. O cussed stories, they will never affect any one but me I fear.--Ever yours, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO MRS. SITWELL In the following is related Stevenson's first introduction to Mr. W. E. Henley. The acquaintance thus formed ripened quickly, as is well known, into a close and stimulating friendship. Of the story called _A Country Dance_ no trace remains. _Edinburgh, Tuesday [February 1875]._ I got your nice long gossiping letter to-day--I mean by that that there was more news in it than usual--and so, of course, I am pretty jolly. I am in the house, however, with such a beastly cold in the head. Our east winds begin already to be very cold. O, I have such a longing for children of my own; and yet I do not think I could bear it if I had one. I fancy I must feel more like a woman than like a man about that. I sometimes hate the children I see on the street--you know what I mean by hate--wish they were somewhere else, and not there to mock me; and sometimes, again, I don't know how to go by them for the love of them, especially the very wee ones. _Thursday._--I have been still in the house since I wrote, and I _have_ worked. I finished the Italian story; not well, but as well as I can just now; I must go all over it again, some time soon, when I feel in the humour to better and perfect it. And now I have taken up an old story, begun years ago; and I have now re-written all I had written of it then, and mean to finish it. What I have lost and gained is odd. As far as regards simple writing, of course, I am in another world now; but in some things, though more clumsy, I seem to have been freer and more plucky: this is a lesson I have taken to heart. I have got a jolly new name for my old story. I am going to call it _A Country Dance_; the two heroes keep changing places, you know; and the chapter where the most of this changing goes on is to be called "Up the middle, down the middle." It will be in six or (perhaps) seven chapters. I have never worked harder in my life than these last four days. If I can only keep it up.