Previous to the last act of the melo-drama, a man belonging to the theatre came and called Mr. Dodcomb out of the box to ask him if he would be so obliging as to go on the stage for a senator in the trial scene, one of the big boys that usually assisted in making out this august assemblage having unexpectedly run away and gone to sea. Mr. Dodcomb (who was not entirely unused to lending himself to similar emergencies) kindly consented; and, after returning to whisper the circumstance to his wife, he slipped out unobserved by the rest of the party. When the drop-curtain again rose, eight or ten senators, with venerable white wigs, were seen sitting in a sort of pews, and wearing pink robes and ermine capes; which ermine, according to Miss Flimbury, was only white paper spotted over with large regular splotches of ink at equal distances. Presently, on recognising their beloved parent among the conscript fathers, the Dodcomb children became rather too audible in expressing their delight, exclaiming: "Oh! there's pappy. Only see pappy on the stage. Don't pappy look funny?" The pit-people looked up, and the box-people looked round, and Mrs. Dodcomb tried to silence the children by threats of making them go home. Peter Jones quieted them directly by stopping their mouths with cakes from his well-stored pocket; thus anticipating the treat he had provided for them as a regale between the play and after-piece. The scene over, Mr. Dodcomb speedily got rid of his senatorial costume, and returned to the box in _propriâ personâ_, where he was loudly greeted by his children, each insisting on being "the one that first found out their pappy among the men in wigs and gowns." "Well if ever!" exclaimed Mr. Jones. "There's no knowing what good's before us! Little did we expect when we came here to-night, that we should be sitting here in the same box with anybody that ever acted on the stage. I am so glad." The after-piece was the Forty Thieves, which Peter and Mrs. Jones had never seen before, and which had extraordinary charms for the old man, who in his youth had been well versed in the Arabian Tales. Giving himself up, as he always did, to the illusion of the scene, he could well have dispensed with the explanations of the Dodcombs, who began by informing Mrs. Jones that the fairy Ardanelle, though in her shell-formed car she seemed to glide through the water, was in reality pulled along by concealed men with concealed ropes.