* * * * *

That autumn (1856) my father went to France for six weeks, on
business. My sister Ida went with the Gibsons to Ramsgate, and I
remained in London with my mother. I did my best to replace my
father in Barge Yard, and when he came back he was so pleased with
me (and I think with himself also) that he gave me twenty pounds,
and said, "Go to Paris for a week, Bob, and see Barty, and give him
this, with my love."

And "this" was another twenty-pound note. He had never given me such
a sum in my life--not a quarter of it; and "this" was the first time
he had ever tipped Barty.

Things were beginning at last to go well with him. He had arranged
to sell the vintages of Bordeaux and Champagne, as well as those of
Burgundy; and was dreaming of those of Germany and Portugal and
Spain. Fortune was beginning to smile on Barge Yard, and ours was to
become the largest wine business in the world--comme tout un chacun
sait.

I started for Paris that very night, and knocked at Barty's bedroom
door by six next morning; it was hardly daylight--a morning to be
remembered; and what a breakfasting at Babet's, after a rather cold
swim in the Passy school of natation, and a walk all round the
outside of the school that was once ours!

Barty looked very well, but very thin, and his small sprouting beard
and mustache had quite altered the character of his face. I shall
distress my lady readers if I tell them the alteration was not an
improvement; so I won't.

What a happy week that was to me I leave to the reader's
imagination. We took a large double-bedded room at the Hotel de
Lille et d'Albion in case we might want to smoke and talk all night;
we did, I think, and had our coffee brought up to us in the morning.

I will not attempt to describe the sensations of a young man going
back to his beloved Paris "after five years." Tout ca, c'est de
l'histoire ancienne. And Barty and Paris together--that is not for
such a pen as mine.

I showed him a new photograph of Leah Gibson--a very large one and
an excellent. He gazed at it a long time with his magnifying-glass
and without, all his keen perceptions on the alert; and I watched
his face narrowly.

"My eyes! She _is_ a beautiful young woman, and no mistake!" he
said, with a sigh. "You mustn't let her slip through your fingers,
Bob!"

"How about that toss?" said I, and laughed.

"Oh, I resign _my_ claim; she's not for the likes o' me. You're