n, Richie, you are, on this occasion, if your dad may tell you
so, wrong. I ask pardon for my bluntness; but I put it to you, could
we, not travelling as personages in our well-beloved country, count on
civility to greet us everywhere? Assuredly not. My position is, that by
consenting to their honest enthusiasm, we the identical effect you
are perpetually crying out for--we civilize them, we civilize them.
Goodness!--a Great Britain without Royalty!'

He launched on a series of desolate images. In the end, he at least
persuaded himself that he had an idea in his anxiety to cultivate the
primary British sentiment.

We moved from town to town along the South coast; but it was vain to
hope we might be taken for simple people. Nor was he altogether to
blame, except in allowing the national instinct for 'worship and
reverence' to air itself unrebuked. I fled to the island. Temple ran
down to meet me there, and I heard that Janet had written to him for
news of me. He entered our hotel a private person; when he passed out,
hats flew off before him. The modest little fellow went along a double
line of attentive observers on the pier, and came back, asking me in
astonishment who he was supposed to be.

'I petitioned for privacy here!' exclaimed my father. It accounted for
the mystery.

Temple knew my feelings, and did but glance at me.

Close upon Temple's arrival we had a strange couple of visitors.
'Mistress Dolly Disher and her husband,' my father introduced them. She
called him by one of his Christian names inadvertently at times. The
husband was a confectioner, a satisfied shade of a man who reserved
the exercise of his will for his business, we learnt; she, a bustling,
fresh-faced woman of forty-five, with still expressive dark eyes, and, I
guessed, the ideal remainder of a passion in her bosom. The guess was no
great hazard. She was soon sitting beside me, telling me of the 'years'
she had known my father, and of the most affectionate friend and perfect
gentleman he was of the ladies who had been in love with him; 'no
wonder': and of his sorrows and struggles, and his beautiful voice, and
hearts that bled for him; and of one at least who prayed and trusted he
would be successful at last.

Temple and the pallid confectioner spent the day on board a yacht with
my father. Mrs. Dolly stayed to nurse me and persuade me to swallow
medicine. She talked of her youth, when, as a fashionable bootmaker's
daughter, she permitt