lose quarters with a determined young prophet. To do so would upset the
habits of a lifetime. So Sir Tiglath knows all about it."

There was a moment of silence, which was broken by the agreeable voice
of Lady Enid saying,--

"All about what? Remember, please, that I'm a young woman and that all
young women share one quality. All about what, please?"

Mrs. Merillia looked at the Prophet. The Prophet looked at Sir Tiglath,
who wagged his great head and cried, with rolling pathos and rebuke,--

"Oh-h-h-h!"

"Please--Mr. Vivian!" repeated Lady Enid, with considerable
determination.

"Grannie means that I--that--well, that I have been enabled by the stars
to foretell certain future events," said the Prophet, glancing rather
furtively at Sir Tiglath while he spoke, to note the effect of the
desperate declaration.

"Oh-h-h-h!" bellowed the distressed astronomer, shaking like a jelly in
his wrath.

"What?" cried Lady Enid, in an almost piercing voice, and with a manner
that had suddenly become most animated. "What--like Malkiel's _Almanac_
does?"

This remark had a very striking effect upon Sir Tiglath, an effect
indeed so striking that it held Mrs. Merillia, Lady Enid and the Prophet
in a condition of paralytic expectation for at least three minutes by
the grandmother's clock in the corner of the drawing-room.

The venerable astronomer was already very stout in person and very
inflamed in appearance. But at this point in the discourse he suddenly
became so very much stouter and so very much more inflamed, that his
audience of three gazed upon him rather as little children gaze upon
dough which has been set by the cook to "rise" and which is fulfilling
its mission with an unexpected, and indeed intemperate, vivacity.
Their eyes grew round, their features rigid, their hands tense, their
attitudes expectant. Leaning forward, they stared upon Sir Tiglath with
an unwinking fixity and preternatural determination that was almost
entirely infantine. And while they did so he continued slowly to expand
in size and to deepen in colour until mortality seemed to drop from
him. He ceased to be a man and became a phenomenon, a purple thing that
journeyed towards some unutterable end, portentous as marching judgment,
tragic as fate, searching as epidemic, and yet heavily painted and
generally touched up by the brush of some humorous demon, such as lays
about him in preparation for Christmas pantomime, sworn to provide the
giants