“Come to the middle of the room, the lightning is straight above us!”

We crouched together as the thunder crashed over the house.  Rain,—­nothing but rain.  No ever-varying light and shade, as in common squalls.  One great cascade poured down its awful monotony.

A bursting noise at the door.  There stood before us Mrs. Romulus, Miss Hurribattle, and Mr. Stellato.  Soaked, dripping, reeking,—­take your choice of adjectives, or look into Worcester for better.  The ladies might have passed for transcendental relatives of Fouque’s Undine.  Stellato, with his hair and face bedaubed with a glutinous substance into which his helmet had been resolved, did not strongly resemble one’s idea of a Progressive Gladiator.  Truly, a deplorable contrast between that late triumphant march before the house, and this present estate of the leaders, so reduced, so pitiable!

“Oh, dear, dear, what can I do for you?” cried good Mrs. Widesworth, forgetting all resentment in a gracious gush of sympathy.

“‘Only wine-bibbers and flesh-eaters are affected by the weather,’” murmured the clergyman, in bitter quotation, “’Storm and sunshine are alike wholesome to the purified seekers for truth.’”

“Seekers for truth!” echoed Professor Owlsdarck; “one would say that our friends must have been seeking it in its native well.”

“As a medical man,” said Dr. Dastick, “I shall direct Mrs. Widesworth to provide some dry garments for her unexpected guests.  Also, I think it my duty to mention that a glass of hot brandy-and-water would be but common prudence.”

“The first part of your advice shall be complied with,” assented our hostess,—­“that is, if I can find anything to put on to them.  As to the last suggestion,—­I have, to be sure, a decanter of fine old Cognac in the closet, but it would be almost an insult to offer it.”

“The pledge has its important exceptions,” observed Mr. Stellato, shivering perceptibly. “’Except when prescribed by a medical attendant,’—­I believe I quote the exact language, Mrs. Romulus,—­and Dr. Dastick has a diploma.”

“Come up-stairs, then,” said Mrs. Widesworth, taking the decanter from the closet; “you will all catch your deaths of cold, if you stay another minute.”

When the three patrons of Progress again appeared among us, they really seemed to have accomplished their transference to an unconventional and pastoral era.  The ladies were quite lost in the spacious habits provided for them.  Likewise, they were curiously swathed in shawls and scarfs of various make and texture, and might be considered representatives of any age, past, present, or future, to which the beholder might take a fancy.  Mr. Stellato had been got into the only article of male attire which the establishment afforded.  This was an ancient dressing-gown, very small in the arms, and narrow in the back:  it had belonged to Twynintuft himself, who was six feet two, and as thin as a bean-pole.  The thickly wadded skirts swept the ground, or clung heavily about the lower limbs.  The garment combined every disadvantage of a Roman toga and a fashionable swallow-tail.