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334 curiosities, as I suppose there are not two more in England at present out of the India House Museum. I have just come from the D.G.C. meeting, and, I suppose, ended my business there, except for receiving my £100 which they were once again kind enough to vote us. Stanley will tell you all about the meeting. I am much better than I have been. I went down (or up) to Oxford for two days at Whitsuntide, and I am going there about the middle of June again to take my M.A. degree; which is perhaps rather a fad of mine; but I thought I might indulge it for once."

The Leek dye-vats were busily at work all that winter and into the following spring. On Sunday, the 26th of March, 1876, he wrote from there to Mrs. Burne-Jones:

"My days are crowded with work; not only telling immoveable Lancashire what to do, but even working in sabots and blouse in the dye-house myself—you know I like that. Your kind hope for my poem was vain I am sorry to say: T. Wardle rather insisted on my going out with him, so I yielded, not very loth, as I thought a country walk would not be amiss: so we took train to a station and then walked, first by a gimcrack palace of Pugin's, Alton Towers to wit, then to a village where your friend the novel-writer came from (called Ellaston, I rather think), then to a village church, Norbury, with a strange very rich chancel to it, out of place in that queer way that things are in England, then up the valley of the Dove to Ashbourne, which I think Dr. Johnson had something to do with: a dull walk that last, I scarcely know why, but Ashbourne church very fine and rich; and so home.

"Some time this week I am going to Nottingham to see the hot vat in operation for flock wool-dyeing: when I was a very youngster, my father's mother,