s. Merillia.

"Why, Beau, of course, Beau--the dog. What should it mean?"

"Bow?" cried Fancy. "Is he writ so?"

"Of course, silly girl. It is written Beau, and you can pronounce it as
you would pronounce a bow of ribbon."

Fancy said no more, though it was easy to see that she was much shaken
by this circumstance. But she could never afterwards be induced to utter
her favourite's name. She was physically unable to speak the word so
strangely, so almost impiously, spelt. This she declared with tears.
Persuasion and argument were unavailing. Henceforth Beau was always
called by her "the dog," and it was obvious that, had she been led
out to the stake, she must have burned rather than save herself by a
pronouncing of the combination of letters by which she had been so long
deceived.

Such an inflexible mind had Mrs. Fancy, to whom the Prophet now applied
himself with gestures almost Sinaic.

She was dressed in mouse-coloured grenadine, and was seated in a small
chamber opening out of Mrs. Merillia's bedroom, engaged in what she
called "plain tatting."

"Fancy," said the Prophet, entering and closing the door carefully, "you
know me well."

"From the bottle, sir," she answered, darting the bone implements in and
out.

"Have you ever thought--has it ever occurred to you--"

"I can't say it has, sir," Fancy replied, with the weak decision
peculiar to her.

She was ever prone thus to answer questions before they were fully
asked, or could be properly understood by her, and from such premature
decisions as she hastened to give she could never afterwards be
persuaded to retreat. Knowing this the Prophet said rapidly,--

"Fancy, if a man finds out that he is a prophet what ought he to do?"

The lady's-maid rattled her bones.

"Let it alone, sir," she answered. "Let it alone, Master Hennessey."

"Well, but what d'you mean by that?"

"What I say sir. I can't speak different, nor mean other."

"But can't you explain, Fancy?"

"Oh, Master Hennessey, the lives that have been wrecked, the homes that
have been broke up by explainings!"

Her eye seemed suddenly lit from within by some fever of sad, worldly
knowledge.

"Well, but--" the Prophet began.

"I know it, Master Hennessey, and I can't know other."

She sighed, and her gaze became fixed like that of a typhoid patient in
a dream.

"Them that knows other let them declare it," she ejaculated. "I
say again, as I did afore--the homes that have been broke