"I have never told Perny and Van anything about you, because I have never quite found the opportunity to do it in the way I would like. But I think sometimes they suspect, for the other day, when we went out to look at houses, Perny said he didn't suppose I'd want my house very close to two old hardened sinners like them. Then we came to a vacant lot that was just about large enough for three houses, and I said we wouldn't buy houses at all, but would buy the lot and build there side by side and just to suit us. And I said we would have our studios on the same floor of each, and opening through into each other as they do now, and that Perny's should be between, because we both illustrate his work sometimes, and that then we would be able to hire editors to run the 'Whole Family,' and we would work at the kind of work we liked to do and at no other. And I said that evenings we would sit together and talk just as we do now, and you would be there, too--though, of course, I didn't say that, but I know they understood and liked it, and you would like it too, sweetheart, for you have said so.
"And then Van said, 'Bully, old man!' and Perny didn't say anything, but he put his arms over Van and me when we came to the stairs, and we went up and took a look at my picture before dark. Perny wants me to finish it and sell it to get the money to put into the paper, and says he is going to buy it back with the first returns that come, to hang over his desk when we get into our new houses. But he isn't, because we are going to give it to him, you and I, when you come, and then we will all go together and try to make the originals of it happier because we are so happy ourselves. The money I have been saving will be enough, I am sure, to pay my share in starting the paper, for we will only have a few little engraving and composition and stationery bills and postage, and maybe some salaries to pay, before the returns begin to come in. But I am going to finish the picture anyway, so's to have it ready, and Perny and Van both say it is the best thing, so far, I have ever done. We don't any of us work as much as we did, but then it has taken such a lot of time to plan for the paper that we couldn't, and, after all, a few dollars invested that way now will count so much for us all by and by. Perny is working at editing, too, a good deal, and Van and I help. We have already got some 'copy' at the printer's, and Van and I have designed some department headings and a title-head that I will send you proofs of as soon as we get them engraved. We are going to have a beautiful paper, and if we can only get presses to print them fast enough when the first issue goes out in November, we will have two or three million circulation anyway by the first of the year.