dissolve. In vain she explained to me that his bag held only my old shoes
and her yellow petticoat. In vain she now offered to let me _see with my
own eyes_. My imagination was by this time proof against ocular
demonstration. One morning early, she took me down stairs into the
housekeeper's room, where Simon and his bag were admitted; she emptied the
bag in my presence, she laughed at my foolish fears, and I pretended to
laugh, but my laugh was hysterical. No power could draw me within arm's-
length of the bag or the Jew. He smiled and smoothed his features, and
stroked his white beard, and, stooping low, stretched out his inoffensive
hand to me; my maid placed sugared almonds on the palm of that hand, and
bid me approach and eat. No! I stood fixed, and if the Jew approached, I
ran back and hid my head in Fowler's lap. If she attempted to pull or push
me forwards I screamed, and at length I sent forth a scream that wakened my
mother--her bell rang, and she was told that it was only Master Harrington,
who was afraid of poor Simon, the old-clothes-man. Summoned to the side of
my mother's bed, I appeared nearly in hysterics--but still faithful to my
promise, I did not betray my maid;--nothing could be learned from me but
that I could not bear the sight of Old Simon the Jew. My mother blamed
Fowler for taking me down to see such a sort of a person. The equivocating
maid replied, that Master Harrington could not or would not be asy unless
she did; and that indeed now it was impossible to know how to make him asy
by day or by night; that she lost her natural rest with him; and that for
her part she could not pretend to stand it much longer, unless she got her
natural rest. Heaven knows _my_ natural rest was gone! But, besides, she
could not even get her cup of tea in an evening, or stir out for a mouthful
of fresh air, now she was every night to sing Master Harrington to sleep.

It was but poetical justice that she who had begun by terrifying me, in
order to get me to bed, and out of her way, should end by being forced to
suffer some restraint to cure me of my terrors: but Fowler did not