Chapter I

formed, then, the opinion that her Eepersip, who lives an ardent life of three or four years in nearly every child's consciousness, lives not at all anywhere no the world's multitude of books. And it came to seem to me that this Eepersip very possibly has something to say to you about your children, and about yourself of a time that you may easily have forgotten, as well as, perhaps, to your children directly.

A last point: Barbara has been given by her parents, in the final preparation of this manuscript, exactly what help she has asked for. That is not nearly so much help as many an adult author often has from us, for there is not one idea or structural change of ours in the entire story. But I see no value in withholding solicited advice in order to make a Roman holiday for those who like to chuckle or guffaw over infantile slips in spelling and grammar. Barbara, whose spelling and grammarhappen to be very reliable, would want us to straighten them out for her if they weren't; and we should do it. When she asks whether a comma will do or ought it to be a semi-colon? we answer as well as we can. When she wants to know: "have I made it clear what this means?" or "Have I used this word twice too near together?" of course we say how it strikes us. Annoyingly from my Yankee point of view, she insists on a preference for Oxford spelling, undoubtedly met in three out of four of the contemporary books which she reads. Well, then, I point out to her that if going to spell "colour" she, must also spell "favourite" and "storey" and "veranda." But the words themselves, the sentences, are hers, just as truly as is the pattern of the whole; and hers is a really workmanlike care for weeding out gawky constructions and repetitions of the words of which she ins been successively over-fond.

One of the great objects of imaginative writing, I take it, is to have joy. Another, not wholly separable from the first, is to learn as you go. I like to suppose that Barbara, just turned twelve, is having her just share of both.

Wilson Follett

March, 1926