asked him to dine and expound his views.




CHAPTER III.


Here we three are seated round the open window--after dinner--familiar
as in the old happy time--and my mother is talking low, that she may not
disturb my father, who seems in thought--

Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr! I feel it--I have it. Where! What! Where! Knock
it down; brush it off! For Heaven's sake, see to it! Crrrr-crrrrr--
there--here--in my hair--in my sleeve--in my ear--cr-cr.

I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that as I sat down to
begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly
slipped from my hand, and leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing in
the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even
for that time of year. And while I was so gazing I felt something
crawling just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and
mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth
What? That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing--a dark
thing--a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight took me
so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent shake, and the thing went--
where I know not. The what and the where are the knotty points in the
whole question! No sooner had it gone than I was seized with repentance
not to have examined it more closely; not to have ascertained what the
creature was. It might have been an earwig,--a very large, motherly