Bob was not only the most important person in the Oxford household, but he was good enough to be very fond of me, so it seems to me quite natural that he should have come with his master to pay me a visit.
I remember arriving at the house one dark winter's evening after an absence of over two years, and Bob's welcome to me was so ecstatic that he nearly knocked me down in a vain attempt to get his paws round my neck.
I heard the professor, who was always rather jealous of Bob's affections, say in a whisper to his wife: "Most touching thing I ever saw, that dog's welcome when Miss Bates arrived!"
Dear Bob! I am so glad he can still come and see me, with his dearly loved master.
Another shuffle of the photographs brings to the top a sweet girlish face and figure, "sixteen summers or something less."
She appeared first upon a plate in the summer of 1905, but so indistinctly as to the face that I could not recognise it.
A few months ago the same figure appeared again, but quite clearly this time, and involuntarily, as I looked at it, I exclaimed: "Why, of course, it is Lily Blake!"
Now it is nearly thirty years since I met this charming child; during my first visit to Egypt. She and her father (a well-known physician) and her aunt, were spending a six weeks' holiday in Cairo, and I saw more of her than would otherwise have been the case, because she was the playmate of another young girl—the child of friends of mine at Shepheard's Hotel.
Lily was a sweet-looking, delicate girl, with soft, sleepy blue eyes, and was always dressed in a simple, artistic fashion. A few months after our return to England I saw in the papers the death of this pretty child; for she was little more at the time. I wrote a letter of condolence and sympathy, which was at once answered by the aunt in very kind fashion; and since then I have seen nothing to remind me of Lily until this last year has brought her once more within my ken. I am only too thankful to realise that any influence so pure and beautiful as hers, may be around me sometimes in my daily life.