king of my letter and its probable
effect. It never once occurred to me that my Angelina might possibly
find it difficult to construe Horace. Towards evening, I escaped again,
and flew to Barnard's Green. It wanted nearly an hour to the time of
performance; but the tuning of a violin was audible from within, and the
money-taker was already there with his pipe in his mouth and his hands
in his pockets. I had no courage to address that functionary; but I
lingered in his sight and sighed audibly, and wandered round and round
the canvas walls that hedged my divinity. Presently he took his pipe out
of, his mouth and his hands out of his pockets; surveyed me deliberately
from head to foot, and said:--

"Hollo there! aint you the party that brought a three-cornered letter
here last evening!"

I owned it, falteringly.

He lifted a fold in the canvas, and gave me a gentle shove between the
shoulders.

"Then you're to go in," said he, shortly. "She's there, somewhere.
You're sure to find her."

The canvas dropped behind me, and I found myself inside. My heart beat
so fast that I could scarcely breathe. The booth was almost dark; the
curtain was down; and a gentleman with striped legs was lighting the
footlamps. On the front pit bench next the orchestra, discussing a plate
of bread and meat and the contents of a brown jug, sat a stout man in
shirt-sleeves and a woman in a cotton gown. The woman rose as I made my
appearance, and asked, civilly enough, whom I pleased to want.

I stammered the name of Miss Angelina Lascelles.

"Miss Lascelles!" she repeated. "I am Miss Lascelles," Then, looking at
me more narrowly, "I suppose," she added, "you are the little boy that
brought the letter?"

The little boy that brought the letter! Gracious heavens! And this
middle-aged woman in a cotton gown--was she the Angelina of my dreams!
The booth went round with me, and the lights danced before my eyes.

"If you have come for an answer," she continued, "you may just say to
your Mr. Pyramid that I am a respectable married woman, and he ought to
be ashamed of himself--and, as for his letter, I never read such a heap
of nonsense in my life! There, you can go out by the way you came in,
and if you take my advice, you won't come back again!"

How I looked, what I said, how I made my exit, whether the doorkeeper
spoke to me as I passed, I have no idea to this day. I only know that I
flung myself on the dewy grass under a great tree in the f