of the old wall-flower farm front, I saw little Mabel Sweetwinter, often my playfellow and bedfellow, a curly-headed girl, who would have danced on Sunday for a fairing, and eaten gingerbread nuts during a ghost-story.  She was sitting by a furze-bush in flower, cherishing in her lap a lamb that had been worried.  She looked half up at me, and kept looking so, but would not nod.  Then good-bye, thought I, and remembered her look when I had forgotten that of all the others.

CHAPTER IV

I HAVE A TASTE OF GRANDEUR

Though I had not previously seen a postillion in my life, I gazed on the pair bobbing regularly on their horses before me, without a thought upon the marvel of their sudden apparition and connection with my fortunes.  I could not tire of hearing the pleasant music of the many feet at the trot, and tried to explain to my father that the men going up and down made it like a piano that played of itself.  He laughed and kissed me; he remembered having once shown me the inside of a piano when the keys were knocked.  My love for him as we drove into London had a recognized footing:  I perceived that he was my best friend and only true companion, besides his being my hero.  The wicked men who had parted us were no longer able to do harm, he said.  I forgot, in my gladness at their defeat, to ask what had become of Shylock’s descendant.

Mrs. Waddy welcomed us when we alighted.  Do not imagine that it was at the door of her old house.  It was in a wide street opening on a splendid square, and pillars were before the houses, and inside there was the enchantment of a little fountain playing thin as whipcord, among ferns, in a rock-basin under a window that glowed with kings of England, copied from boys’ history books.  All the servants were drawn up in the hall to do homage to me.  They seemed less real and living than the wonder of the sweet-smelling chairs, the birds, and the elegant dogs.  Richest of treats, a monkey was introduced to me.  ’It ‘s your papa’s whim,’ Mrs. Waddy said, resignedly; ’he says he must have his jester.  Indeed it is no joke to me.’

Yet she smiled happily, though her voice was melancholy.  From her I now learnt that my name was Richmond Roy, and not Harry Richmond.  I said, ‘Very well,’ for I was used to change.  Everybody in the house wore a happy expression of countenance, except the monkey, who was too busy.  As we mounted the stairs I saw more kings of England painted on the back-windows.  Mrs. Waddy said:  ’It is considered to give a monarchical effect,’—­she coughed modestly after the long word, and pursued:  ’as it should.’  I insisted upon going to the top floor, where I expected to find William the Conqueror, and found him; but that strong connecting link between John Thresher and me presented himself only to carry my recollections of the Dipwell of yesterday as far back into the past as the old Norman days.