re: and so like
dear Hector, with one paw on little Mistress's eye eating her
breakfast!!!...

* * * * *

_Ecclesfield._ August 24, 1881.

... Andre has made the "rough-book" (water colours) of "A week spent
in a Glass Pond, By the Great Water Beetle." I only had it a few
hours, but I scrambled a bit of the title-page on to the enclosed
sheet of green paper for you to see. It is entirely in colours. The
name of the tale is beautifully done in letters, the initials of which
_bud and blossom_ into the Frogbit (which shines in white masses on
the Aldershot Canal!) [_Sketch._] To the left the "Water Soldier"
(_Stratiotes Aloides_) with its white blossoms. At the foot of the
page "the Great Water Beetle" himself, writing his name in the
book--_Dyticus Marginalis_. There is another blank page at the
beginning of the book, where the beetle is standing blacking himself
in a penny ink-pot!!!! and another where he is just turning the leaves
of a book with his antennae--the book containing the name of the
chromolithographers. He has adopted almost all my ideas, and I told
him (though it is not in the tale) "I should like a _dog_ to be with
the children in all the pictures, and a cat to be with the old
naturalist,"--and he has such a dog (a white bull terrier) [_sketch_],
who waits on the woodland path for them in one picture, _noofles_ in
the colander at the water-beasts in another, examines the beetle in a
third, stands on his hind legs to peep into the aquarium in a fourth,
etc. But I cannot describe it all to you. I have asked to have it
again by and by, and will send you a coloured sketch or two from it. I
am so much pleased!... Perhaps the best part of the book is _the
cover_. It is very beautiful. The Bell Glass Aquarium (lights in the
water beautifully done) carries the title, and reeds, flowers, newts,
beetles, dragon-flies, etc., etc., are grouped with wondrous fancy!
This entirely his own design....

_Jesmond Dene, Newcastle-on-Tyne._
August 30, 1881.

* * * * *

The four Jones children and their nurse are in lodgings at a place
called Whitley on the coast, not far from here. Somebody from here
goes to see them most days. To-day Mrs. J. and I went. As we were
starting dear "Bob" (the collie who used to belong to the
Younghusbands) was determined to go. Mrs. Jones said No. He bolted
into the cab and crouched among my petticoats; I begged for hi