Dreams of this kind are taken at times by wealthy people as a cordial at the bar of benevolent intentions.  But Victor was not the man to steal his refreshments in that known style.  He meant to make deeds of them, as far as he could, considering their immense extension; and except for the sensitive social name, he was of single-minded purpose.

Turning to the steps of a chemist’s shop to get a prescription made up for his Nataly’s doctoring of her domestics, he was arrested by a rap on his elbow; and no one was near; and there could not be a doubt of the blow—­a sharp hard stroke, sparing the funny-bone, but ringing.  His head, at the punctilio bump, throbbed responsively—­owing to which or indifference to the prescription, as of no instant requirement, he pursued his course, resembling mentally the wanderer along a misty beach, who hears cannon across the waters.

He certainly had felt it.  He remembered the shock:  he could not remember much of pain.  How about intimations?  His asking caused a smile.

Very soon the riddle answered itself.  He had come into view of the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum; recollecting a couplet from the pen of the disrespectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a fall:  his head and his elbow responded simultaneously to the thought.

All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the chemist’s shop:  and that belongs to the minor involutions of circumstances and the will.  It passed like a giver’s wrinkle.  He read the placards of the Opera; reminding himself of the day when it was the single Opera-house; and now we have two-or three.  We have also a distracting couple of Clowns and Pantaloons in our Pantomimes:  though Colney says that the multiplication of the pantaloon is a distinct advance to representative truth—­and bother Colney!  Two Columbines also.  We forbear to speak of men, but where is the boy who can set his young heart upon two Columbines at once!  Victor felt the boy within him cold to both:  and in his youth he had doated on the solitary twirling spangled lovely Fairy.  The tale of a delicate lady dancer leaping as the kernel out of a nut from the arms of Harlequin to the legalized embrace of a wealthy brewer, and thenceforth living, by repute, with unagitated legs, as holy a matron, despite her starry past, as any to be shown in a country breeding the like abundantly, had always delighted him.  It seemed a reconcilement of opposing stations, a defeat of Puritanism.  Ay, and poor women!—­women in the worser plight under the Puritan’s eye.  They may be erring and good:  yes, finding the man to lift them the one step up!  Read the history of the error.  But presently we shall teach the Puritan to act by the standards of his religion.  All is coming right—­must come right.  Colney shall be confounded.

Hereupon Victor hopped on to Fenellan’s hint regarding the designs of Mrs. Burman.

His Nataly might have to go through a short sharp term of scorching—­Godiva to the gossips.