"Oh yes, I know that story," I said, just to prevent him going on bothering. "It's in Ollendorff." The lecture-room was quite full, and we--Lady Scilly and I--squeezed ourselves in at the back in a kind of cosy corner there was, and we were almost in the dark. "Sit tight, child, whatever happens!" she kept saying, and held my hand as if I should run away. When among a rain of claps the lecturer came in I saw why, for it was George! Lady Scilly grabbed my arm, and said, "Don't call out, child!" As if I was going to! But now I saw why she had kept calling him the lecturer instead of saying his name whenever she had spoken of him before. Now I saw why she was so full of nods and winks and grins, and had brought me to the lecture so particularly. Now I saw why the old gentleman had called her a fairy--that meant a tease, and I wasn't going to gratify her by seeming upset or anything. Not I! So I sat quite still as she told me, and George began. I borrowed a pencil of the Ollendorff man, and put down some notes to remind me of what George said, for Ariadne. It took me some time to get used to the funny little voice George put on to lecture with, quite different to his Isleworth voice. Presently when I began to catch on a little I found that the lecture was all about novels and the good of them, as Lady Scilly had said. This is the sort of thing-- "_A novel_," said my father, "_is apt to hold a group of quite ordinary, uninteresting characters, wallowing in their clammy, stale environment, like fishes in an aquarium, held together by a thin thread of narrative, and bounded by the four walls of the author's experience. His duty is to enlarge that experience, for to novels we go, not so much for amusement as for a criticism of Life. That portion of life which comes under the reader's own observation is naturally so restricted, so vastly disproportionate, to the whole great arcana_." (I do hope I got this down right!) "_The novelist should be omniscient and omnipotent._" (Once I got these two great words, all the rest seemed child's play.) "_A great responsibility lies with the purveyors of this necessary panorama of existence, the men who monopolize the furnishing and regulating of the supply._" (Loud applause.) "_The right man, or peradventure, the right woman_" (he bowed at Lady Scilly), "_knows, or ought to know, so many sides, while the reader, alas, knows but one, and is so tired of that one!_" Everybody sighed and groaned a little to show how tired they were, and George went on--