out the incidents as we rode or drove abroad. An omission to perform a
duty was the fatal forgetfulness to sprinkle pepper on the cream-tarts;
if my father subjected me to an interrogation concerning my lessons, he
was the dread African magician to whom must be surrendered my acquisition
of the ring and the musty old lamp. We were quite in the habit of
meeting fair Persians. He would frequently ejaculate that he resembled
the Three Calendars in more respects than one. To divert me during my
recovery from measles, he one day hired an actor in a theatre, and put a
cloth round his neck, and seated him in a chair, rubbed his chin with
soap, and played the part of the Barber over him, and I have never
laughed so much in my life. Poor Mrs. Waddy got her hands at her sides,
and kept on gasping, 'Oh, sir! oh!' while the Barber hurried away from
the half-shaved young man to consult his pretended astrolabe in the next
room, where we heard him shouting the sun's altitude, and consulting its
willingness for the impatient young man to be further shaved; and back he
came, seeming refreshed to have learnt the sun's favourable opinion, and
gabbling at an immense rate, full of barber's business. The servants
were allowed to be spectators; but as soon as the young man was shaved,
my father dismissed them with the tone of a master. No wonder they loved
him. Mrs. Waddy asked who could help it?

I remember a pang I had when she spoke of his exposure to the risk of
marrying again; it added a curious romantic tenderness to my adoration of
him, and made me feel that he and I stood against the world. To have his
hand in mine was my delight. Then it was that I could think earnestly of
Prince Ahmed and the kind and beautiful Peribanou, whom I would not have
minded his marrying. My favourite dream was to see him shooting an arrow
in a match for a prize, and losing the prize because of not finding his
arrow, and wondering where the arrow had flown to, and wandering after it
till he passed out of green fields to grassy rocks, and to a stony