innocent little girl just fifteen, the daughter of
a low-comedy John Gilpin: a still somewhat gaunt little girl, whose
budding charms of color, shape, and surface were already such that
it didn't matter whether she were good or bad, gentle or simple,
rich or poor, sensible or an utter fool.

C'est toujours comme ca!

We watched the steamer pick its sunny way down the Thames, with
Barty waving his hat by the man at the wheel; and I walked westward
with the little Hebrew artist, who was so affected at parting with
his hero that he had tears in his lovely voice. It was not till I
had complimented him on his wonderful B-flat that he got consoled;
and he talked about himself, and his B-flat, and his middle G, and
his physical strength, and his eye for color, all the way from the
Mansion House to the Foundling Hospital; when we parted, and he went
straight to his drawing-board at the British Museum--an anticlimax!

I found my mother and sister at their late breakfast, and was
scolded; and I told them Barty had got off, and wouldn't come back
for long--it might not be for years!

"Thank Heaven!" said my dear mother, and I was not pleased.

Says my sister:

"Do you know, he's actually stolen Leah's photograph, that she gave
me for my birthday. He asked me for it and I wouldn't give it
him--and it's gone!"

Then I washed and put on my work-a-day clothes, and went straight to
Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, and made myself a bed on the floor with my
great-coat, and slept all day.

* * * * *

Oh heavens! what a dull book this would be, and how dismally it
would drag its weary length along, if it weren't all about the
author of _Sardonyx_!

But is there a lost corner anywhere in this planet where English is
spoken (or French) in which _The Martian_ won't be bought and
treasured and spelt over and over again like a novel by Dickens or
Scott (or Dumas)--for Josselin's dear sake! What a fortune my
publishers would make if I were not a man of business and they were
not the best and most generous publishers in the world! And all
Josselin's publishers--French, English, German, and what not--down
to modern Sanscrit! What millionaires--if it hadn't been for this
little busy bee of a Bob Maurice!

Poor Barty! I am here! a bon chat, bon rat!

And what on earth do _I_ want a fortune for? Barty's dead, and I've
got so much more than I need, who am of a frugal mind--and what I've
got is all going to lit