A soiree fantastique! what would I not give to be present at a soiree fantastique!  I had read of the Rosicrucians, of Count Cagliostro, and of Doctor Dee.  I had peeped into more than one curious treatise on Demonology, and I fancied there could be nothing in the world half so marvellous as that last surviving branch of the Black Art entitled the Science of Legerdemain.

What if, for this once, I were to ask leave to be present at the performance?  Should I do so with even the remotest chance of success?  It was easier to propound this momentous question than to answer it.  My father, as I have already said, disapproved of public entertainments, and his prejudices were tolerably inveterate.  But then, what could be more genteel than the programme, or more select than the prices?  How different was an entertainment given in the large room of the Red Lion Hotel to a three-penny wax-work, or a strolling circus on Barnard’s Green!  I had made one of the audience in that very room over and over again when the Vicar read his celebrated “Discourses to Youth,” or Dr. Dunks came down from Grinstead to deliver an explosive lecture on chemistry; and I had always seen the reserved seats filled by the best families in the neighborhood.  Fully persuaded of the force of my own arguments, I made up my mind to prefer this tremendous request on the first favorable opportunity, and so hurried home, with my head full of quite other thoughts than usual.

My father was sitting at the table with a mountain of books and papers before him.  He looked up sharply as I entered, jerked his chair round so as to get the light at his back, put on his spectacles, and ejaculated:—­

“Well, sir!”

This was a bad sign, and one with which I was only too familiar.  Nature had intended my father for a barrister.  He was an adept in all the arts of intimidation, and would have conducted a cross-examination to perfection.  As it was, he indulged in a good deal of amateur practice, and from the moment when he turned his back to the light and donned the inexorable spectacles, there was not a soul in the house, from myself down to the errand-boy, who was not perfectly aware of something unpleasant to follow.

“Well, sir!” he repeated, rapping impatiently upon the table with his knuckles.

Having nothing to reply to this greeting, I looked out of the window and remained silent; whereby, unfortunately.  I irritated him still more.

“Confound you, sir!” he exclaimed, “have you nothing to say?”

“Nothing,” I replied, doggedly.

“Stand there!” he said, pointing to a particular square in the pattern of the carpet.  “Stand there!”

I obeyed.

“And now, perhaps, you will have the goodness to explain what you have been about this morning; and why it should have taken you just thirty-seven minutes by the clock to accomplish a journey which a tortoise—­yes, sir, a tortoise,—­might have done in less than ten?”