rd seemed to
take his audience more and more into his confidence. He no longer
confined himself to the stage, but came tripping down the steps that
led from the platform to the middle aisle and addressed, first this one
and then that from among his spectators--only Nan again noticed that
these always happened to be sitting as they were themselves, in the
foremost seats. He induced a man just in front of her to come upon the
stage to "assist" him in one of his "experiments," and the girl
trembled lest at any moment he might demand a similar favor of her, for
though she was reckless enough as a general thing, she had sufficient
delicacy to dread being made conspicuous in such a place as this.

"O Miss Blake," she whispered in the governess' ear, "can't we move
back a little? If he should make me go up there I'd sink through the
floor!"

"Probably you would. No doubt he would let you down himself--through a
trap-door. No, we must stay where we are and we must bear it as best
we may. Perhaps he will overlook us."

Nan thought of her hat and the many glances it had drawn to her in the
restaurant, and for the first time she had a feeling of mistrust
regarding it. Suppose it should fix his eye, with its towering bows
and flaming bird-of-paradise! If it did, she would hate it forever
after.

But she soon forgot her anxiety in her interest in the wizard himself.
Silver pieces were flung in the air and then mysteriously reappeared in
the pocket of some unsuspecting member of the audience who was much
surprised at seeing them straightway converted into so many gold ones
under his very nose. Innocent-looking hoops turned out to possess the
most remarkable faculty for resisting all attempts to link them on the
part of any one of the spectators, and yet immediately assuming all
manner of shapes and positions in the hands of the dexterous magician
himself.

At last a shallow cabinet was set upon two chairs in the centre of the
stage, and after a word or two of explanation, the wizard drew first
one chair and then the other from beneath it, and lo! the magic
cupboard remained poised in midair, without any visible means of
support whatever.

"You see, ladies and gentlemen," announced the suave magician, "this
cabinet is bare; precisely like Mother Hubbard's immortal cupboard.
Can you see anything there? No! I thought not. Now I will place
within it these bells, so; and this tambourine, so; also this empty
slate. Yo