tten my promise."

"A poor Pen is out of place in an artist's studio, except to minister to
the requirements of the autograph hunter. Well, you need not be jealous.
My literary flight is not intended to be a very high one after all. Now
you know more about the secrets of the studio than I do; so tell me, is
it the custom of H. F. to have a regular sitting for a caricature, after
the fashion of the portrait painters?"

"Oh, you are too delightfully innocent altogether," laughed the Pencil,
rubbing its leaden head rapidly on a piece of paper, to sharpen its
point. "A regular sitting! What do _you_ think? No, sir, no,
emphatically never. Such an operation would be fatal to the delicate
constitution of a caricature, and the result would not be worth the
paper upon which it is drawn. It is only in ordinary portraiture that a
sitting is required, and upon that point I have a theory."

"Oh, never mind your theories now, old fellow," rejoined the Pen, as it
took a sip of ink and prepared to chronicle the reply. "What I want to
chat to you about at present is how to catch a caricature."

The Pencil pricked up his ears, and with a knowing wink, said:

"Ah, I see! You want to know secrets. Well, I will tell you 'how it's
done.' The great point about a caricature is that it must be caught
unawares. A man when he thinks he is unobserved struts about gaily, just
for all the world like a hedgehog. All his peculiarities are then as
evident as your cousins the quills upon the back of the fretful
porcupine. But the moment the man or woman who is about to be
caricatured observes H. F. take me in hand, I always notice that he
shrivels up and collapses as quickly as one of the insectivora surprised
at his feast. But wait a moment: now you ask me, I do recollect one
unfortunate man who, despite H. F.'s protest, insisted upon coming here
once to sit for a caricature. He looked the picture of misery, and sat
in the chair there, just as if he were at a dentist's. H. F. made a most
flattering portrait. Indeed, so much too handsome was it that I could
hardly follow the workings of his fingers, I was laughing so."

"'Oh, what a relief!' cried the sitter, when H. F. showed him the
drawing. 'You have certainly made a pretty guy of me, but, thank heaven,
I am not thin-skinned.'

"'Only thick-headed,' muttered H. F. _sotto voce_ to me as he continued
to chat with the sitter.

"No sooner had he left the studio than the 'study' was in the fire,