waited to read it. I've read it right through! In fact, I found it very refreshing, when jaded with my own work at "Sylvie and Bruno" (coming out at Xmas, I hope) to lie down on the sofa and read a chapter of "Evie." I like it very much: and am so glad to have helped to bring it out. It would have been a real loss to the children of England, if you had burned the MS., as you once thought of doing. . . .
The very last words of his that appeared in print took the form of a preface to one of Mrs. Allen's tales, "The Lost Plum-Cake," (Macmlllan & Co., 1898). So far as I know, this was the only occasion on which he wrote a preface for another author's book, and his remarks are doubly interesting as being his last service to the children whom he loved. No apology, then, is needed for quoting from them here:—
Let me seize this opportunity of saying one earnest word to the mothers in whose hands this little book may chance to come, who are in the habit of taking their children to church with them. However well and reverently those dear little ones have been taught to behave, there is no doubt that so long a period of enforced quietude is a severe tax on their patience. The hymns, perhaps, tax it least: and what a pathetic beauty there is in the sweet fresh voices of the children, and how earnestly they sing! I took a little girl of six to church with me one day: they had told me she could hardly read at all—but she made me find all the places for her! And afterwards I said to her elder sister "What made you say Barbara couldn't read? Why, I heard her joining in, all
