ery much like to shake you by the hand, Mr. Josselin, if
I might make so bold, sir!"

And such an appeal as this would please him far more than the most
fervently written outpourings of the female hearts he had touched.

They, of course, received endless invitations to stay at
country-houses all over the United Kingdom, where they might have
been lionized to their hearts' content, if such had been their wish;
but these they never accepted. They never spent a single night away
from their own house till most of their children were grown up--or
ever wanted to; and every year they got less and less into the way
of dining out, or spending the evening from home--and I don't
wonder; no gayer or jollier home ever was than that they made for
themselves, and each other, and their intimate friends; not even at
Cornelys's, next door, was better music to be heard; for Barty was
friends with all the music-makers, English and foreign, who cater
for us in and out of the season; even _they_ read his books, and
understood them; and they sang and played better for Barty--and for
Cornelys, next door--than even for the music-loving multitude who
filled their pockets with British gold.

And the difference between Barty's house and that of Cornelys was
that at the former the gatherings were smaller and more intimate--as
became the smaller house--and one was happier there in consequence.

Barty gave himself up entirely to his writing, and left everything
else to his wife, or to me, or to Scatcherd. She was really a mother
to him, as well as a passionately loving and devoted helpmeet.

To make up for this, whenever she was ill, which didn't often
happen--except, of course, when she had a baby--he forgot all his
writing in his anxiety about her; and in his care of her, and his
solicitude for her ease and comfort, he became quite a motherly old
woman, a better nurse than Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Gibson--as practical
and sensible and full of authority as Dr. Knight himself.

And when it was all over, all his amiable carelessness came back,
and with it his genius, his school-boy high spirits, his tomfooling,
his romps with his children, and his utter irresponsibility, and
absolute disdain for all the ordinary business of life; and the
happy, genial temper that never seemed to know a moment's depression
or nourish an unkind thought.

Poor Barty! what would he have done without us all, and what should
we have done without Barty? As Scatcherd said o