"He's vexed," I whispered audibly to Kate. "He looks like Othello, the Moor of Venice. What shall I do? I am afraid of the sofa-pillow, if I go near him! He looked a while ago as if he longed to throw it at me; just because I said his nose was aquiline, and broke his chain of subtle and mysterious sympathies." "Kate!" said Cornelius, looking up from his book, "can't you make that girl hold her tongue?" Kate declined the office, and sent me back to him. He pretended to be very angry, but when I deliberately took Shakespeare from him and shut it, he smiled, smoothed my hair, and called me by two or three of the fondest of the many fond and endearing names in Irish, English, and Italian, which it was now his habit to bestow upon me, and thus our little quarrels always ended. I was very happy; yet here as well as at Leigh, the restless spirit of youth was stirring within me. Kate had suffered much, she liked repose; Cornelius had travelled, home sufficed him. My sorrows had been few, and Leigh was the extent of my peregrinations. Of home, of the daily comedies and dramas, which can be enacted in a human dwelling, I knew something; but of life, busy, active, outward life I knew less than most girls of my age, and they--poor things--knew little enough. Kate seldom went beyond her garden; when Cornelius took me out in the evening, it was for a quiet walk in the lanes. I said nothing, but I never passed by the landing window on my way to or from the studio, without stopping to look with a secret longing at the cloud of smoke hanging above London. Cornelius found me there on the afternoon which followed his Shakspearian reading, and he said with some curiosity: "Daisy, what attraction is there in that prospect of brick and smoke?" "What part of London lies next to us?" I asked, instead of answering. "Oxford Street; you surely know Oxford Street?" "I remember having been there two or three times." "Two or three times! You do not mean to say you have never been in Oxford Street more than two or three times!" "Indeed I do, Cornelius. I was ten when I came here, always weak and sickly; then we went to Leigh, and we have been back about a fortnight. It is not so wonderful, you see." Cornelius smiled, smoothed my hair, and said something about "violets in the shade, and birds in their nests." "Yes, but birds leave their nests sometimes, don't they, Cornelius?" I asked a little impatiently. "You want to go to town," he exclaimed, astonished. I smiled. "Oh!" he said, reproachfully, "have you really a wish, and will you not give me the pleasure of gratifying it? Do tell me what you wish for, Daisy--pray do." He spoke warmly, and looked eagerly into my face. "Well, then," I replied, "take me some day to Oxford Street. I know the Pantheon is there, and I remember it as a sort of fairy-palace."