“There’s a deal more caterpillar than butterfly in this life for the likes of us, my boy,” the old man would say, as he laboured at his setting. “Makin’ pictures an’ such is all very well, but we can’t always choose our own line. I’ve bin a lucky man in my time, thank God. The insects was my hobby long ’fore I made any money of ’em. Your poor gran’mother that you never saw, ‘A lot o’ good them moths an’ grubs’ll be to you,’ she used to say. ‘Why not bees, as you can make somethin’ out of?’ An’ Haskins, that took the next round to mine, he kep’ bees. But I began sellin’ a few specimens to gentlemen here an’ there, an’ then more, an’ after that I took ’em to London reg’lar, same as now. It ain’t as good as it was, an’ it’s goin’ to be worse, but I’m in hopes it’ll last my time out. It was because I was carryin’ letters here that I had the chance o’ doin’ it at all. If you was to carry ’em yourself, you’d be able to do something else too—bees p’raps. A good few mends boots, but we’re a bit off the villages here. Here’s the house—yours an’ your mother’s when I’m gone, an’ I’m sixty-nine; an’ it’s healthier an’ cleaner than London. You could put up a little bit o’ glass in the garden an’ grow tomatoes an’ cucumbers. Them—an’ fowls—you could keep fowls—would sell very well to the gentlefolk, an’ they all know the postman. Wages ain’t high, but you live cheap here, with no rent, and there’s a pension, p’raps. That’s your line, depend on it, Johnny.” “But I should like a trade where I could _make_ something,” the boy would answer wistfully. “I really should, gran’dad.” “Ah”—with a shake of the head—“make what? I doubt but you’re meanin’ pictures. You must get that notion out of your head, Johnny. Some of them as make ’em may do well, but most’s awful. I see ’em in London often, drorin’ on the pavement; reg’lar clever ones, too, doin’ mackerel an’ bits o’ salmon splendid, and likenesses o’ the Queen, an’ sunsets, with the sky shaded beautiful. Beggin’! Reg’lar beggin’, with a cap out for coppers, an’ ‘Help gifted poverty’ wrote in chalk. _That_ won’t do, ye know, Johnny.”