This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
and David Widger
There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in RussellStreet, an Elf! clad in white,—small, delicate, with curls of jet overher shoulders; with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shonethrough the room as no eyes merely human could possibly shine. The Elfapproached, and stood facing us. The sight was so unexpected and theapparition so strange that we remained for some moments in startledsilence. At length my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two,and the more fitted to deal with the eerie things of another world, hadthe audacity to step close up to the little creature, and, bending downto examine its face, said, "What do you want, my pretty child?"
Pretty child! Was it only a pretty child after all? Alas! it would bewell if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolvethemselves only into pretty children.
"Come," answered the child, with a foreign accent, and taking my fatherby the lappet of his coat, "come, poor papa is so ill! I am frightened!come, and save him."
"Certainly," exclaimed my father, quickly. "Where's my hat, Sisty?
Certainly, my child; we will go and save papa."
"But who is papa?" asked Pisistratus,—a question that would never haveoccurred to my father. He never asked who or what the sick papas ofpoor children were when the children pulled him by the lappet of hiscoat. "Who is papa?"
The child looked hard at me, and the big tears rolled from those large,luminous eyes, but quite silently. At this moment a full-grown figurefilled up the threshold, and emerging from the shadow, presented to usthe aspect of a stout, well-favored young woman. She dropped acourtesy, and then said, mincingly,—
"Oh, miss, you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed thegentlefolks by running upstairs in that way! If you please, sir, I wassettling with the cabman, and he was so imperent,—them low fellowsalways are, when they have only us poor women to deal with, sir, and—"
"But what is the matter?" cried I, for my father had taken the child inhis arms soothingly, and she was now weeping on his breast.
"Why, you see, sir [another courtesy], the gent only arrived last nightat our hotel, sir,—the Lamb, close by Lunnun Bridge,—and he was takenill, and he's not quite in his right mind like; so we sent for thedoctor, and the doctor looked at the brass plate on the gent's carpet-bag, sir, and then he looked into the 'Court Guide,' and he said, 'Thereis a Mr. Caxton in Great Russell Street,—is he any relation?' and thisyoung lady said, 'That's my papa's brother, and we were going there.'And so, sir, as the Boots was out, I got into a cab, and miss would comewith me, and—"
"Roland—Roland ill! Quick, quick, quick!" cried my father, and withthe child still in his arms he ran down the stairs. I followed with hishat, which of course he had forgotten. A cab, by good luck, was passingour very door; but the chambermaid would not let us enter it till shehad satisfied herself that it was not the same she had dismissed. Thispreliminary investigation completed, we entered and drove to the Lamb.
The chambermaid, who sat opposite, passed the time in ineffectualovertures to relieve my father of the little girl,—who still clungnestling to his breast,—in a long epic, much broken into episodes, ofthe causes which had led to her dismissal of the late cabman, who, toswell his fare, had thought pro