ng the
lines of a new machine he was trying to invent, than he was startled from
intense thought into the attitude of Hogarth's enraged musician by cries
of "Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope!" and there was a little lot of eager
applicants. First a gypsy boy with long black curls and continuous
genuflections, and a fiddle, and doleful complaints that he could not
play it, and that it was the fiddle's fault.

"Well, it is for once," said Hope. "Why, you little duffer, don't you see
the bridge is too low?"

He slackened the string, removed the bridge, fitted on a higher one,
tuned it, and handed it over.

"There," said he, "play us one of the tunes of Egypt. 'The Rogue's
March,' eh? and mizzle."

The supple Oriental grinned and made obeisances, pretended not to know
"The Rogue's March" (to the hen-house), and went off playing "Johnny
Comes Marching Home." (Bridewell to wit.)

Then did Miss Clifford's French maid trip forward smirking with a parasol
to mend: _Desolee de vous deranger, Monsieur Hope, mais notre demoiselle
est au desespoir: oh, ces parasols Anglais_!

"_Connu_," said Hope, "_voyons ca_;" and in a minute repaired the
article, and the girl spread it, and went off wriggling and mincing with
it, so that there was a pronounced horse-laugh at her minauderies.

Then advanced a rough young English nurse out of a farm-house with a
child that could just toddle. She had left an enormous doll with Hope for
repairs, and the child had given her no peace for the last week. Luckily
the doll was repaired, and handed over. The mite, in whose little bosom
maternal feelings had been excited, insisted on carrying her child. The
consequence was that at about the third step they rolled over one
another, and to spectators at a little distance it was hard to say which
was the parent and which the offspring. Them the strapping lass in charge
seized roughly, and at the risk of dislocating their little limbs, tossed
into the air and caught, one on each of her own robust arms, and carried
them off stupidly irritated--for want of a grain of humor--at the
good-natured laugh this caused, and looking as if she would like to knock
their little heads together.

Under cover of this an old man in a broad hat, and seemingly infirm,
crept slowly by and looked keenly at Hope, but made no application. Only
while taking stock of Hope his eyes flashed wickedly, and much too
brightly for so old a man as he appeared. He did not go far; he got
beh