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One day, when the mother was a little stronger, she called Hector to her bedside, and playfully claimed the right to be the child’s godmother, and to give it her name.

“And who else can have so good a right?” answered Hector. Yet he wondered just a little that Annie should want the child named after herself, and not after her mother.

But when the time for the child’s baptism came, Annie, who would hold the little one herself, whispered in the ear of the clergyman:

“The child’s name is Iris.”

I have told my little story. But perhaps my readers will have patience with me while I add just one little inch to the tail of the mouse my mountain has borne.

Hector’s next book, although never so popular as in any outward sense to be called a success, yet was not quite a failure even in regard to the money it brought him, and even at the present day has not ceased to bring in something. Doubtless it has faults not a few, but, happily, the man who knows them best is he who wrote it, and he has never had to repent that he did write it. And now he has an audience on which he can depend to welcome whatever he writes. That he has enemies as well goes without saying, but they are rather scorners than revilers, and they have not yet caused him to retaliate once by criticising any work of theirs. Neither, I believe, has he ever failed to recognize what of genuine and good work most of them have produced. One of the best results to himself of his constant endeavor to avoid jealousy is that he is still able to write verse, and continues to take more pleasure in it than in telling his tales. And still his own test of the success of any of his books is the degree to which he enjoyed it himself while writing it.

His legacy has long been spent, and he has often been in straits since; but he has always gathered good from those straits, and has never again felt as if slow walls were closing in upon him to crush him. And he has hopes by God’s help, and with Annie’s, of getting through at last, without ever having dishonored his high calling.

The last time I saw him, he introduced his wife to me–having just been telling me his and her story–with the rather enigmatical words:

“This is my wife. You cannot see her very well, for, like Hamlet, I wear her ‘in my heart’s core, aye, in my heart of hearts!'”