"Present, indeed! Such as it is, it lies out there. _Nobody_ left it at the office, so Vincent tells me; but I found it there among the packages, and was strongly inclined to consider it a mistake altogether. Certainly 'Charles Auchester, Esq.,' was not 'known there;' but I smelt plum-cake, and that decided me to have it opened here." I rushed to the chair behind the sofa, while the rest--except Millicent and Mr. Davy, who were addressing each other in the low voice which is the test of all human proprieties--were scolding in various styles. The fracas was no more to me than the jingling of the maternal keys. I found a large oblong parcel rolled in the thickest of brown papers, and tied with the thickest of strings round and round again so firmly that it was, or appeared to be, hopeless to open it unless I gnawed that cord. "Oh! Lydia, lend me your scissors." "For shame, Charles!" pronounced Clo. "How often have I bidden you never to waste a piece of string!" She absolutely began upon those knots with her fingers. My own trembled so violently that they were useless. Meanwhile, for she was about ten minutes engaged in the neat operation,--I scanned the address. It was, as Fred had mentioned to me, as an adult and as an esquire, and the writing was bold, black, and backward. It seemed to have come a long way, and smelt of travelling; also, when the paper was at length unfolded, it smelt of tow, and something oblong was muffled in the tow. "A box!" observed sapient Clotilda. I tore the tow out in handfuls. "Don't strew it upon the carpet, oh, my dearest Charles!" Clo, I defy you! It was a box truly, but what sort of a box? It had a lid and a handle. It was also fastened with little hooks of brass. It was open, I don't know how. There it lay,--there lay a real violin in the velvet lining of its varnished case! No, I could not bear it; it was of no use to try. I did not touch it, nor examine it. I flew away upstairs. I shut myself into the first room I came to, which happened to be Lydia's; but I did not care. I rushed up to the window and pressed my face against the cold glass. I sobbed; my head beat like a heart in my brain; I wept rivers. I don't suppose the same thing ever happened to any one else, therefore none can sympathize. It was mystery, it was passion, it was infinitude; it was to a soul like mine a romance so deep that it has never needed other. My violin was mine, and I was it, and the beauty of my romance was, in truth, an ideal charmer; for be it remembered that I knew no more how to handle it than I should have known how to conduct at the festival.