Being with her father was like being with a magician or like watching
a conjuror on the stage. You never knew what he was going to do
next. Whatever he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of
being startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too much) nothing
her father did was ever surprising to Rosalie; but it was surprising
in the sense of being absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even
better than reading when she first began to read, and far better
than anything in the world before the mysteries in books were
discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit and stare at her father and
think how wonderful he was and wonder what extraordinary thing he
would do next. Everything belonged to him. The whole of life was
ordered with a view to what he would think about it. The whole
of life was continually thrown off its balance and whirled into
the most entrancing convulsions by sudden activities of this most
wonderful man.

Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful father with a bull
after him! Why, that was her very earliest recollection of him!
That showed you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the first
time (as it were) flying before a bull! Bounding wildly across a
field towards her with a bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her
mother ever rush along in front of a bull? Never. Was it possible
to imagine any of the women she knew rushing before a bull? It
was not possible. To see a woman rushing before a bull would have
alarmed Rosalie for she would have felt it was unnatural; but for
her father to be bounding wildly along in front of a bull seemed
to her perfectly natural and ordinary and she was not in the least
alarmed; only, as always, enthralled.

Her father, while Rosalie watched him, was not in great danger. He