e, that will come of itself,' he said. I wished
to know whether I was likely to be transported suddenly to some other
place. He assured me that nothing save a convulsion of the earth would do
it, which comforted me, for I took the firmness of the earth in perfect
trust. We spoke of our old Sunday walks to St. Paul's and Westminster
Abbey as of a day that had its charm. Our pew among a fashionable
congregation pleased him better. The pew-opener curtseyed to none as she
did to him. For my part, I missed the monuments and the chants, and
something besides that had gone--I knew not what. At the first indication
of gloom in me, my father became alarmed, and, after making me stand with
my tongue out before himself and Mrs. Waddy, like a dragon in a piece of
tapestry, would resume his old playfulness, and try to be the same that
he had been in Mrs. Waddy's lodgings. Then we read the Arabian Nights
together, or, rather, he read them to me, often acting out the incidents
as we rode or drove abroad. An omission to perform a duty was the fatal
forgetfulness to sprinkle pepper on the cream-tarts; if my father
subjected me to an interrogation concerning my lessons, he was the dread
African magician to whom must be surrendered my acquisition of the ring
and the musty old lamp. We were quite in the habit of meeting fair
Persians. He would frequently ejaculate that he resembled the Three
Calendars in more respects than one. To divert me during my recovery from
measles, he one day hired an actor in a theatre, and put a cloth round
his neck, and seated him in a chair, rubbed his chin with soap, and
played the part of the Barber over him, and I have never laughed so much
in my life. Poor Mrs. Waddy got her hands at her sides, and kept on
gasping, 'Oh, sir! oh!' while the Barber hurried away from the
half-shaved young man to consult his pretended astrolabe in the next
room, where we heard him shouting the sun's altitude, and consulting its
willingness for the impatient young man to be further shaved; and back he
came, seeming refreshed to have learnt the sun's favourable opinion, and
gabbling at an immense rate, full of barber's business. The servants were
allowed to be spectators; but as soon as the young man was shaved, my
father dismissed them with the tone of a master. No wonder they loved
him. Mrs. Waddy asked who could help it?

I remember a pang I had when she spoke of his exposure to the risk of
marrying again; it added a curious ro