at
silver watch: "Look, Sophy, when the minute-hand gets there (or before,
if they walk briskly), you will hear them knock."

Sophy clasped her hands in mute suspense, half-credulous, half-doubting;
then she went and opened the room-door, and stood on the landing-place
to listen. Merle approached the Comedian, and said in a low voice, "I
wish for your sake she had the gift."

WAIFE.--"The gift!--the three pounds!--so do I!"

COBBLER.--"Pooh! worth a hundred times three pounds; the gift,--the
spirituous gift."

WAIFE.--"Spirituous! don't like the epithet,--smells of gin!"

COBBLER.--"Spirituous gift to see in the crystal: if she had that, she
might make your fortune."

WAIFE (with a 'sudden change of countenance).--"Ah! I never thought of
that. But if she has not the gift, I could teach it her,--eh?"

COBBLER (indignantly).--"I did not think to hear this from you, Mr.
Waife. Teach her,--you! make her an impostor, and of the wickedest kind,
inventing lies between earth and them as dwell in the seven spheres!
Fie! No, if she hasn't the gift natural, let her alone: what here is not
heaven-sent is devil-taught."

WAIFE (awed, but dubious).--"Then you really think you saw all that you
described, in that glass egg?"

COBBLER.--"Think!--am I a liar? I spoke truth, and the proof
is--there--!" Rat-tat went the knocker at the door.

"The two minutes are just up," said the Cobbler; and Cornelius Agrippa
could not have said it with more wizardly effect.

"They are come, indeed," said Sophy, re-entering the room softly: "I
hear their voices at the threshold."

The Cobbler passed by in silence, descended the stairs, and conducted
Vance and Lionel into the Comedian's chamber; there he left them, his
brow overcast. Gentleman Waife had displeased him sorely.

CHAPTER VIII.

Showing the arts by which a man, however high in the air Nature may
have formed his nose, may be led by that nose, and in directions
perversely opposite to those which, in following his nose, he might
be supposed to take; and, therefore, that nations the most liberally
endowed with practical good sense, and in conceit thereof, carrying
their noses the most horizontally aloof, when they come into
conference with nations more skilled in diplomacy and more practised
in "stage-play," end by the surrender of the precise object which it
was intended they should surrender before they laid their noses
together.

We all k