"I am very busy, or I would write at more length to you. Believe me, that I do not forget you ever."
From her invalid's couch Mrs. Hamilton King sent Francis treasured messages of trust and commendation, and, guessing his need, wrote him many things that sounded bravely to one who accused himself of something worse than futility in friendship:--
"It is true that everyone must live out his own life, and I am not sure that it is good that another should live it for him; but you at least have done much for your friends. Coventry Patmore relied on you; and when I last saw Mr. Wilfrid Meynell he told me that both he and Mrs. Meynell felt themselves entirely your debtors--your poetry was so much for them. And you may have much more to do. I wish it were possible for you to live nearer and within reach of your friends. . . . It is a great consolation to feel that one has ministered to the most sensitive and precious among the children of God, and also it is a great joy and privilege to me to have your friendship."
Between 1896 and 1900 he also had correspondence with one who was especially his friend, Miss Katharine Douglas King, Mrs. Hamilton King's daughter. Before meeting her he had written to W. M.:--
"Do you know that Miss K. Douglas King is--together with Winifred Lucas--one of the few women I ever desired particularly to meet? She has a temperament of genius heaped up and running over. I read through all her _Merry England_ stories some months ago, and was startled by their individual and impressive note."
Her book, _The Child who will never Grow Old_, published two years later, bears on its first page his line, "The heart of Childhood, so divine for me." Miss King played with the Palace Court children, and worked among the poor children of the East End who often figure in her stories. Francis once visited her and her charges at the hospital in Leonard Square. Writing subsequently, Miss King says:--
"I count you as an old friend, but I know now I did not really know you until Saturday. When you were by your little 'genius's'--Harry's--bed, and the baby boy Percy with the white shoes was at your knee, that was to me a revelation! I think of you now with that infant's serious, confiding face upturned to you. It was all so natural. To some people a child is a pretty ornamental _addition_. Your personality now seems incomplete without the child as the natural and exquisite finish to the whole man. Adieu, dear friend."