induced me
to choose him; I never could imagine a grandeur in his office,
notwithstanding my father's eloquent talk of ruling a realm, shepherding
a people, hurling British thunderbolts. The day's discipline was, that
its selected hero should reign the undisputed monarch of it, so when I
was for Pitt, I had my tart as he used to have it, and no story, for he
had none, and I think my idea of the ruler of a realm presented him to
me as a sort of shadow about a pastrycook's shop. But I surprised people
by speaking of him. I made remarks to our landlady which caused her to
throw up her hands and exclaim that I was astonishing. She would always
add a mysterious word or two in the hearing of my nursemaid or any
friend of hers who looked into my room to see me. After my father had
got me forward with instructions on the piano, and exercises in early
English history and the book of the Peerage, I became the wonder of the
house. I was put up on a stool to play 'In my Cottage near a Wood,' or
'Cherry Ripe,' and then, to show the range of my accomplishments, I was
asked, 'And who married the Dowager Duchess of Dewlap?' and I answered,
'John Gregg Wetherall, Esquire, and disgraced the family.' Then they
asked me how I accounted for her behaviour.

'It was because the Duke married a dairymaid,' I replied, always tossing
up my chin at that. My father had concocted the questions and prepared
me for the responses, but the effect was striking, both upon his
visitors and the landlady's. Gradually my ear grew accustomed to her
invariable whisper on these occasions. 'Blood Rile,' she said; and her
friends all said 'No!' like the run of a finger down a fiddlestring.

A gentleman of his acquaintance called on him one evening to take him
out for a walk. My father happened to be playing with me when this
gentleman entered our room: and he jumped up from his hands and
knees, and abused him for intruding on his privacy, but afterwards he
introduced him to me as Shylock's great-great-great-grandson, and said
that Shylock was satisfied with a pound, and his descendant wanted two
hundred pounds, or else all his body: and this, he said, came of the
emigration of the family from Venice to England. My father only seemed
angry, for he went off with Shylock's very great grandson arm-in-arm,
exclaiming, 'To the Rialto!' When I told Mrs. Waddy about the visitor,
she said, 'Oh, dear! oh, dear! then I'm afraid your sweet papa won't
return very soon, my pre