“And these are what you have called bubbles?”

“Precisely.”

“And yet, if I understood you aright, when you said, ’I go for bubbles—­hurrah for bubbles’—­you meant to speak well of them?”

“To be sure I did—­certainly—­yes—­no—­so far as a magazine article goes, I did.”

“But a magazine article, my love—­bear with me, I pray you—­ought to be something better than a brilliant paradox, hey?”

“Go on—­I like this.”

“If you will promise not to be angry.”

“I do.”

“Well, then—­however telling it may be to hurrah for bubbles, and to call your wife a bubble, and your child another; because the world is all a ‘fleeting show,’ and bubbles are a ‘fleeting show;’ or because the Scriptures tell us that everything here is emptiness and vanity—­and bubbles are emptiness and vanity; I have the whole of your argument, I believe?—­is hardly worthy of a man, who, in writing, would wish to make his fellow-man better or wiser—­”

“Well done the bubble!—­I never heard you reason before:  keep it up, my dear.”

“You never gave me a chance; and, by the way, there is one bubble you have entirely overlooked.”

“And what is that—­marriage?”

“No.”

“The buried treasures, and the cross of pure gold, a foot and a half long, you were talking with that worthy man about, last winter, when I came upon you by surprise, and found you both sitting together in the dark—­and whispering so mysteriously?”

“Captain Watts, you mean, the lighthouse keeper?”

“Yes.  Upon my word, Peter, I began to think you were up for California.  I never knew you so absent in all your life as you were, day after day, for a long while after that conversation.”

“The very thing, my dear!—­and as I happen to know most of the parties, and was in communication for three whole years with the leader of the enterprise, I do think it would be one of the very best illustrations to be found, in our day, of that strange, steadfast, unquenchable faith, which upholds the bubble-hunter through all the sorrows and all the discouragements of life, happen what may:  and you shall have the credit of suggesting that story.  But then, look you, my dear—­if I content myself with telling the simple truth, nobody will believe me.”

“Try it.”

“I will!—­Good night, my dear.”

“Don’t make a long story of it, I beseech you.—­Good night!”

“Hadn’t you better leave the little cap with me?  It may keep you awake, my dear.”

“Nonsense.  Good night!” and papa drops into a chair, makes a pen, and goes to work as follows:—­