CHAPTER XXXV.
There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in Russell Street—an Elf!!! clad in white,—small, delicate, with curls of jet over her shoulders;—with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shone through the room, as no eyes merely human could possibly shine. The Elf approached, and stood facing us. The sight was so unexpected, and the apparition so strange, that we remained for some moments in startled silence. At length my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two, and the more fitted to deal with the eirie things of another world, had the audacity to step close up to the little creature, and, bending down to examine its face, said, "What do you want, my pretty child?"
Pretty child! was it only a pretty child after all? Alas! it would be well if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolve themselves only into pretty children!
"Come," answered the child, with a foreign accent, and taking my father by 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 have occurred to my father. He never asked who or what the sick papas of poor children were, when the children pulled him by the lappet of his coat.—"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 figure filled up the threshold, and, emerging from the shadow, presented to us the aspect of a stout, well-favoured young woman. She dropped a curtsy, and then said, mincingly,
"Oh, miss! you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed the gentlefolks by running up stairs in that way. If you please, sir, I was settling with the cabman, and he was so imperent: them low fellows always 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 in his arms, soothingly, and she was now weeping on his breast.
"Why, you see, sir, (another curtsy,) the gent only arrived last night at our hotel, sir—The Lamb, close by Lunnun Bridge—and he was taken ill—and he's not quite in his right mind like:—so we sent for the doctor, 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, 'There is a Mr Caxton in Great Russell Street,—is he any relation?' and this young 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 come with me, and——"