‘And who lies outside?’ she asked.

‘That’s my papa,’ I was beginning to say, but broke the words with a sob, for I seemed to be separated from him now by the sea itself.

They petted me tenderly.  My story was extracted by alternate leading questions from the old gentleman and timely caresses from the ladies.  I could tell them everything except the name of the street where I lived.  My midnight excursion from the house of my grandfather excited them chiefly; also my having a mother alive who perpetually fanned her face and wore a ball-dress and a wreath; things that I remembered of my mother.  The ladies observed that it was clear I was a romantic child.  I noticed that the old gentleman said ‘Humph,’ very often, and his eyebrows were like a rook’s nest in a tree when I spoke of my father walking away with Shylock’s descendant and not since returning to me.  A big book was fetched out of his library, in which he read my grandfather’s name.  I heard him mention it aloud.  I had been placed on a stool beside a tea-tray near the fire, and there I saw the old red house of Riversley, and my mother dressed in white, and my aunt Dorothy; and they all complained that I had ceased to love them, and must go to bed, to which I had no objection.  Somebody carried me up and undressed me, and promised me a great game of kissing in the morning.

The next day in the strange house I heard that the old gentleman had sent one of his clerks down to my grandfather at Riversley, and communicated with the constables in London; and, by-and-by, Mrs. Waddy arrived, having likewise visited those authorities, one of whom supported her claims upon me.  But the old gentleman wished to keep me until his messenger returned from Riversley.  He made all sorts of pretexts.  In the end, he insisted on seeing my father, and Mrs. Waddy, after much hesitation, and even weeping, furnished the address:  upon hearing which, spoken aside to him, he said, ‘I thought so.’  Mrs. Waddy entreated him to be respectful to my father, who was, she declared, his superior, and, begging everybody’s pardon present, the superior of us all, through no sin of his own, that caused him to be so unfortunate; and a real Christian and pattern, in spite of outsides, though as true a gentleman as ever walked, and by rights should be amongst the highest.  She repeated ‘amongst the highest’ reprovingly, with the ears of barley in her blue bonnet shaking, and her hands clasped tight in her lap.  Old Mr. Bannerbridge (that was the old gentleman’s name) came back very late from his visit to my father, so late that he said it would be cruel to let me go out in the street after my bed-time.  Mrs. Waddy consented to my remaining, on the condition of my being surrendered to her at nine o’clock, and no later, the following morning.