," she answered, "but Pheeb behaved bad, and it's Topsy now."

Ernest's daughter Alice married the boy who had been her playmate more
than a year ago. Ernest gave them all they said they wanted and a good
deal more. They have already presented him with a grandson, and I doubt
not, will do so with many more. Georgie though only twenty-one is owner
of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him. He began when
about thirteen going with old Rollings and Jack in the barge from
Rochester to the upper Thames with bricks; then his father bought him and
Jack barges of their own, and then he bought them both ships, and then
steamers. I do not exactly know how people make money by having a
steamer, but he does whatever is usual, and from all I can gather makes
it pay extremely well. He is a good deal like his father in the face,
but without a spark--so far as I have been able to observe--any literary
ability; he has a fair sense of humour and abundance of common sense, but
his instinct is clearly a practical one. I am not sure that he does not
put me in mind almost more of what Theobald would have been if he had
been a sailor, than of Ernest. Ernest used to go down to Battersby and
stay with his father for a few days twice a year until Theobald's death,
and the pair continued on excellent terms, in spite of what the
neighbouring clergy call "the atrocious books which Mr Ernest Pontifex"
has written. Perhaps the harmony, or rather absence of discord which
subsisted between the pair was due to the fact that Theobald had never
looked into the inside of one of his son's works, and Ernest, of course,
never alluded to them in his father's presence. The pair, as I have
said, got on excellently, but it was doubtless as well that Ernest's
visits were short and not too frequent. Once Theobald wanted Ernest to
bring his children, but Ernest knew they would not like it, so this was
not done.

Sometimes Theobald came up to town on small business matters and paid a
visit to Ernest's chambers; he generally brought with him a couple of
lettuces, or a cabbage, or half-a-dozen turnips done up in a piece of
brown paper, and told Ernest that he knew fresh vegetables were rather
hard to get in London, and he had brought him some. Ernest had often
explained to him that the vegetables were of no use to him, and that he
had rather he would not bring them; but Theobald persisted, I believe
through sheer love of doing something which his