"We must call him 'Ariel' no more, I fear," Lady Twentifold said to the Professor, with a smile; "we must get you to invent a new name for him, out of the depths of your palæontology."
"I think we must allow him to name himself; as some of my animals have had to do. What shall we call you, my old confederate?"
"Everybody seems to call me Tommy," I answered, finding this the truth; "and it sounds more natural than any other name. One of the examiners forgot himself, and called me Mr. Tommy, in the Schools, instead of Mr. Upmore."
"Then come, Mr. Tommy," Lady Twentifold replied, "and let me show you an old friend, whom you have not seen, I think I may say, ever since you were my Ariel. Laura, do you know who this is?"
The loveliest maiden the eye could light on, even in a flight among the angels, came forward from the shelter of the summer curtains, and looked at me, with shy surprise. It was a very short look; and yet it has lasted in my heart all life, and will last there through all future life.
Each of us wanted to say something; but neither knew exactly what to say. So we only shook hands, and waited for the easier times of talking.
"We never wait for Roland, now he is so busy," our hostess said to the Professor; "he has scarcely time to feel the necessity, which others feel, for nourishment. When he is an older politician, he will not live entirely on politics."
"Zeal is the great point, in any pursuit," he answered, as she took his arm; "unhappily it cools too often, before it is replaced by habit. But in his case, it will not be so. He has more than zeal; he has constancy."
"Sometimes, I wish that he had less;" Lady Twentifold answered, with a little sigh, while her daughter came for my timid guidance; "when there are so few of us, it seems hard that the public should claim so large a part."