slam which his mother shudders to think of; and then, roused to the
most appalling pitch of passion by the coachman knocking a double
knock to show that he was by no means convinced, he broke with
uncontrollable force from his parent and the servant girl, and
running into the street without his hat, actually shook his fist at
the coachman, and came back again with a face as white, Mrs. Nixon
says, looking about her for a simile, as white as that ceiling.
She never will forget his fury that night, Never!

To this account Felix listens with a solemn face, occasionally
looking at you to see how it affects you, and when his mother has
made an end of it, adds that he looked at every coachman he met for
three weeks afterwards, in hopes that he might see the scoundrel;
whereupon Mrs. Nixon, with an exclamation of terror, requests to
know what he would have done to him if he HAD seen him, at which
Felix smiling darkly and clenching his right fist, she exclaims,
'Goodness gracious!' with a distracted air, and insists upon
extorting a promise that he never will on any account do anything
so rash, which her dutiful son-it being something more than three
years since the offence was committed-reluctantly concedes, and his
mother, shaking her head prophetically, fears with a sigh that his
spirit will lead him into something violent yet. The discourse
then, by an easy transition, turns upon the spirit which glows
within the bosom of Felix, upon which point Felix himself becomes
eloquent, and relates a thrilling anecdote of the time when he used
to sit up till two o'clock in the morning reading French, and how
his mother used to say, 'Felix, you will make yourself ill, I know
you will;' and how HE used to say, 'Mother, I don't care-I will do
it;' and how at last his mother privately procured a doctor to come
and see him, who declared, the moment he felt his pulse, that if he