yet a more subtle craft lay under all.

"Well, in any case, when you go back you can claim the distinction of
having been taken seven times round London, although you can't really
have seen much of it," said Sir Philip. "This is a Circle train."

At this assertion I looked up. Though admittedly curved a little about
the roof the chariot was in every essential degree what we should
pronounce to be a square one; whereupon, feeling at length that the
involvement had definitely passed to a point beyond my contemptible
discernment, I spread out my hands acquiescently and affably remarked
that the days were lengthening out pleasantly.

In such a manner I became acquainted with the one Sir Philip, and
thereby, in a somewhat circuitous line, the original purpose which
possessed my brush when I began this inept and commonplace letter is
reached; for the person in question not only lay upon himself the
obligation of leading me "by the strings of his apron-garment"--in the
characteristic and fanciful turn of the barbarian language--to that
same Palace on the following day, but thenceforth gracefully affecting
to discern certain agreeable virtues in my conversation and custom of
habit he frequently sought me out. More recently, on the double plea
that they of his household had a desire to meet me, and that if I
spent all my time within the Capital my impressions of the Island
would necessarily be ill-balanced and deformed, he advanced a project
that I should accompany him to a spot where, as far as I was competent
to grasp the idiom, he was in the habit of sitting (doubtless in an
abstruse reverie), in the country; and having assured myself by means
of discreet innuendo that the seat referred to would be adequate for
this person also, and that the occasion did not in any way involve a