(which threatens to recall _The Palace of Truth_), and here all
the picturesque phrases which she has been in the childish habit of
misinterpreting in their literal sense--"a bee in the bonnet," to
"ride hobbies," "to play ducks and drakes," "to pay the piper," and so
forth--are realised in human or animal form. With these are mixed the
familiar figures of her waking life, all of them exposed in their true
characters so that you can distinguish the devotion of the doctor (who
now appears in pink because he likes riding hobbies) and the affection
of the teddy-bear (now expanded to human proportions) from the
serpentine nature of the governess and the double-faced dealings of
the nurse. Her father, who is a stranger to her, comes on dressed in
banknotes and chained to a safe; her mother, also a stranger, wears
a society bee which buzzes in the place where her bonnet would have
been; and five samples of the fashionable world, where, as you know,
everybody thinks the same thing at the same time, let off recitatives
from time to time in unison. And there was much talk about "Robin
Hood's Barn," a thing I was never told about at an age when I am sure
it would have given me sincere pleasure.

Here and there the symbolism was obvious to the point of crudity;
but you searched in vain for a consistent scheme. The father in his
banknotes lashed to a ponderous safe was an easy personification of
the slavery of wealth, and the pantomime ducks and drakes were simple
to understand as symbolizing the career of a spendthrift (though the
father was never that); but why, you asked, did the double-faced nurse
exhaust all her spare moments and our patience pirouetting about the
stage? Did she represent the levity of the dual life? Not at all;
her actions bore no moral significance: she was just giving a literal
illustration of a phrase--"to dance attendance."