However, the difficulty was solved in a very unexpected manner. One day, whilst smoking my cigar after lunch, I overheard an interview in my studio, which I here reproduce.
A Pencil of mine was working away merrily shortly after the opening of the Session, when suddenly my favourite Pen flew off the writing-table, where it had been enjoying a quiet forty winks, and alighted on the easel.
"How very awkward you are!" cried the Pencil. "See, you have knocked against and so agitated me that I have actually given Sir William an extra chin."
"One more or less does not matter, does it?" rejoined the Pen. "I apologise, and trust you will make allowances for me, as I am only an artist's Pen, don't you know, and naturally rather uncouth, I fear."
"Pray take a seat upon the indiarubber, and let me know to what I am indebted for the honour of this visit."
"Well," continued the Pen, "I have flown over here to remind you of your promise to confess to me some of the secrets of caricature."
"Ah, yes," replied the Pencil, "I remember now. I have really been so busy sketching Members of Parliament at St. Stephen's, that I had almost forgotten my promise."
"A poor Pen is out of place in an artist's studio, except to minister to the requirements of the autograph hunter. Well, you need not be jealous. My literary flight is not intended to be a very high one after all. Now you know more about the secrets of the studio than I do; so tell me, is it the custom of H. F. to have a regular sitting for a caricature, after the fashion of the portrait painters?"
"Oh, you are too delightfully innocent altogether," laughed the Pencil, rubbing its leaden head rapidly on a piece of paper, to sharpen its point. "A regular sitting! What do _you_ think? No, sir, no, emphatically never. Such an operation would be fatal to the delicate constitution of a caricature, and the result would not be worth the paper upon which it is drawn. It is only in ordinary portraiture that a sitting is required, and upon that point I have a theory."
"Oh, never mind your theories now, old fellow," rejoined the Pen, as it took a sip of ink and prepared to chronicle the reply. "What I want to chat to you about at present is how to catch a caricature."
