"If we tell you what you are to do, we shall not think any the worse of
you for doing it. Then I may say to my mother that you will be good and
give no trouble--not even though we bid you shake hands with Hanky and
Panky?"

"I will embrace them and kiss them on both cheeks, if you and she tell me
to do so. But what about the Mayor?"

"He has known everything, and condoned everything, these last twenty
years. He will leave everything to my mother and me."

"Shall I have to see him?"

"Certainly. You must be brought up before him to-morrow morning."

"How can I look him in the face?"

"As you would me, or any one else. It is understood among us that
nothing happened. Things may have looked as though they had happened,
but they did not happen."

"And you are not yet quite twenty?"

"No, but I am son to my mother--and," he added, "to one who can stretch a
point or two in the way of honesty as well as other people."

Having said this with a laugh, he again took my father's hand between
both his, and went back to his office--where he set himself to think out
the course he intended to take when dealing with the Professors.

CHAPTER XVIII: YRAM INVITES DR. DOWNIE AND MRS. HUMDRUM TO LUNCHEON--A
PASSAGE AT ARMS BETWEEN HER AND HANKY IS AMICABLY ARRANGED

The disturbance caused by my father's outbreak was quickly suppressed,
for George got him out of the temple almost immediately; it was bruited
about, however, that the Sunchild had come down from the palace of the
sun, but had disappeared as soon as any one had tried to touch him. In
vain did Hanky try to put fresh life into his sermon; its back had been
broken, and large numbers left the church to see what they could hear
outside, or failing information, to discourse more freely with one
another.

Hanky did his best to quiet his hearers when he found that he could not
infuriate them,--

"This poor man," he said, "is already known to me, as one of those who
have deluded themselves into believing that they are the Sunchild. I
have known of his so declaring himself, more than once, in the
neighbourhood of Bridgeford, and others have not infrequently done the
same; I did not at first recognize him, and regret that the shock of
horror his words occasioned me should have prompted me to suggest
violence against him. Let this unfortunate affair pass from your minds,
and let me again urge upon you the claims of the Sunchild Evidence
Society."

The aud