bability. If we had met that man in Honolulu he would
have done it, and Miss Green would have done it. Only, alas! there is no
completed novel lying in the garret: would there were! It should be out
to-morrow with the name to it, and relieve a kind of tightness in the
money market much deplored in our immediate circle. To be sure (now I
come to think of it) there are some seven chapters of _The Great North
Road_; three, I think, of _Robin Run the Hedge_, given up when some
nefarious person pre-empted the name; and either there--or somewhere
else--likely New York--one chapter of _David Balfour_, and five or six
of the _Memoirs of Henry Shovel_. That's all. But Lloyd and I have
one-half of The Wrecker in type, and a good part of _The Pearl Fisher_
(O, a great and grisly tale that!) in MS. And I have a projected,
entirely planned love-story--everybody will think it dreadfully
improper, I'm afraid--called _Cannonmills_. And I've a vague, rosy haze
before me--a love-story too, but not improper--called _The Rising Sun_.
(It's the name of the wayside inn where the story, or much of the story,
runs; but it's a kind of a pun: it means the stirring up of a boy by
falling in love, and how he rises in the estimation of a girl who
despised him, though she liked him, and had befriended him; I really
scarce see beyond their childhood yet, but I want to go beyond, and make
each out-top the other by successions: it should be pretty and true if I
could do it.) Also I have my big book, _The South Seas_, always with me,
and a sair handfu'--if I may be allowed to speak Scotch to Miss Green--a
sair handfu' it is likely to be. All this literary gossip I bestow upon
you _entre confreres_, Miss Green, which is little more than fair, Miss
Green.

Allow me to remark that it is now half-past twelve o'clock of the living
night; I should certainly be ashamed of myself, and you also; for this
is no time of the night for Miss Green to be colloguing with a
comparatively young gentleman of forty. So with all the kindest wishes
to yourself, and all at Lostock, and all friends in Hants, or over the
borders in Dorset, I bring my folly to an end. Please believe, even when
I am silent, in my real affection; I need not say the same for Fanny,
more obdurately silent, not less affectionate than I.--Your friend,

ROBERT--ROBIN LEWISON.

(Nearly had it wrong--force of habit.)

TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD

_Union Club, Sydney [September 1890