He did not in reality, I am convinced, like Joey or Charlotte one whit better than he liked Ernest. He did not like anyone or anything, or if he liked anyone at all it was his butler, who looked after him when he was not well, and took great care of him and believed him to be the best and ablest man in the whole world. Whether this faithful and attached servant continued to think this after Theobald's will was opened, and it was found what kind of legacy had been left him, I know not. Of his children, the baby who had died at a day old was the only one whom he held to have treated him quite filially. As for Christina he hardly ever pretended to miss her and never mentioned her name; but this was taken as a proof that he felt her loss too keenly to be able ever to speak of her. It may have been so, but I do not think it.

Theobald's effects were sold by auction, and among them the Harmony of the Old and New Testaments which he had compiled during many years with such exquisite neatness, and a huge collection of MS. sermons - being all in fact that he had ever written. These and the Harmony fetched ninepence a barrow load. I was surprised to hear that Joey had not given the three or four shillings which would have bought the whole lot, but Ernest tells me that Joey was far fiercer in his dislike of his father than ever he had been himself, and wished to get rid of everything that reminded him of him.

It has already appeared that both Joey and Charlotte are married. Joey has a family, but he and Ernest very rarely have any intercourse. Of course, Ernest took nothing under his father's will; this had long been understood, so that the other two are both well provided for.

Charlotte is as clever as ever, and sometimes asks Ernest to come and stay with her and her husband near Dover, I suppose because she knows that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. There is a de haut en bas tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay one's finger upon it, but Ernest never gets a letter from her without feeling that he is being written to by one who has had direct communication with an angel. `What an awful creature,' he once said to me, `that angel must have been if it had anything to do with making Charlotte what she is.'

`Could you like,' she wrote to him not long ago, `the thoughts of a little sea change here? The top of the cliffs will soon be bright with heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I should think begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and heather or no heather the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come your room shall be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. Nineteen and sixpence is the price of a return ticket which covers a month. Would you decide just as you would yourself like, only if you come we would hope to try and make it bright for you; but you must not feel it a burden on your mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction.'

`When I have a bad nightmare,' said Ernest to me, laughing as he showed me this letter, `I dream that I have got to stay with Charlotte.'

Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe it is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real literary power than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much as to say, `There now - don't you think you are the only one of us who can write; read this! And if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing for your next book, you can make what use of it you like.' I dare say she writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words `hope,' `think,' `feel,' `try,' `bright,' and `little,' and can hardly write a page without introducing all these words and some of them more than once. All this has the effect of making her style monotonous.

Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late years has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. He finds it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble through getting into the key of C sharp after beginning in the key of C and being unable to get back again.

`Getting into the key of C sharp,' he said, `is like an unprotected female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself at Shepherd's Bush, without quite knowing where she wants to go to. How is she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction? And Clapham Junction won't quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like the diminished seventh - susceptible of such enharmonic change, that you can resolve it into all the possible termini of music.'