His housekeeper heard his harsh voice barking down the passage at her,
and rising with a start from her seat, cried,
'At your service, Sir.'
'At a quarter to twelve o'clock fetch me a sandwich, and a glass of
absynthe, and meanwhile, don't disturb me.'
And she heard him enter his little parlour, and shut the door.
'There's something to vex, but nothing to threaten--nothing. It's all
that comical dream--curse it! What tricks the brain plays us! 'Tis fair
it should though. We work it while we please, and it plays when it may.
The slave has his saturnalia, and flouts his tyrant. Ha, ha! 'tis time
these follies were ended. I've something to do to-night.'
So Mr. Dangerfield became himself again, and applied himself keenly to
his business.
When I first thought of framing the materials which had accumulated in
my hands into a narrative, dear little Lily Walsingham's death was a
sore trouble to me. 'Little' Lily I call her, but though slight, she was
not little--rather tall, indeed.
It was, however, the term I always heard connected with her pretty name
in my boyhood, when the old people, who had remembered her very long
ago, mentioned her, as they used, very kindly, a term of endearment that
had belonged to her, and in virtue of the childlike charm that was about
her, had grown up with her from childhood.
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