as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him.  I said, ’Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary, we are all children of one great mother, Nature.  On this blooming summer morning here you see me’ (I was on the sofa) ’with flowers before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air full of fragrance, contemplating Nature.  I entreat you, by our common brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime, the absurd figure of an angry baker!’ But he did,” said Mr. Skimpole, raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; “he did interpose that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again.  And therefore I am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend Jarndyce.”

It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course.  He took leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in perfect harmony of mind.  We had an opportunity of seeing through some open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a palace to the rest of the house.

I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out.  Our guest was in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to the same fascination.  As to my guardian, the wind, which had threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town, veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it.

Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr. Skimpole had a child’s enjoyment of change and bright weather.  In no way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score.

We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music, and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read aloud in a surprised voice, “Sir Leicester Dedlock!”

The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me and before I had the power to stir.  If I had had it, I should have hurried away.  I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness, to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know where it was.  I heard my name and found that my guardian was presenting me before I could move to a chair.