Of course, I could say nothing; but what I felt, what I thought! Mercy upon us, that we should know a man, that a man should live with us, who had been taken up and put in prison! I fancied him dragged through the streets by two gendarmes, struggling with them, and followed by a crowd of dirty people. I felt that our family was disgraced, we who had been the pink of respectability; my cheeks burned, and I hung my head. I could say nothing; but oh, the grief, the shame, I nursed in secret! Mr. Ambrose, who lived with us, whose standards of conduct (for children, at any rate) were so painfully exalted, Mr. Ambrose had done something terrible, and had been found out, and put in prison for it! Mr. Ambrose, who always dressed in black, had suddenly tossed his bonnet over the mills, and displayed himself cynically in an overcoat of rakish, dare-devil brown—the colour of gravy! Somehow, the notion pursued me, there must be a connection between his overcoat and his crime. The enormity of the affair preyed upon my spirit, day after day, night after night, until, in the end, I could endure it silently no longer; and I spoke to my mother. “Is Mr. Ambrose a burglar?” I enquired. I remember my mother’s perplexity, and then, when I had alleged the reasons for my question, her exceeding mirth. I remember her calling my father; and my father, also, laughed prodigiously, and he went to the door, and cried, “Ambrose! Ambrose!” And when Mr. Ambrose came, and the incident was related to him, even he laughed a little, even his stern face relaxed.