‘Are you in the Peerage?’ said I.

‘Not yet,’ he replied.

‘Well, then,’ said I, ‘I know nothing about you.’

The young lady screamed with laughter.  ’Oh, you funny little boy; you killing little creature!’ she said, and coming round to me, lifted me out of my chair, and wanted to know if I knew how to kiss.

‘Oh, yes; I’ve been taught that,’ said I, giving the salute without waiting for the invitation; ‘but,’ I added, ‘I don’t care about it much.’

She was indignant, and told me she was going to be offended, so I let her understand that I liked being kissed and played with in the morning before I was up, and if she would come to my house ever so early, she would find me lying next the wall and ready for her.

‘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;