An ungainly yokel stepped on the feet of the Mansion girls, and some bold gentlemen, who had spent a goodly portion of their natural lives in Bridewell, swore at them. Still the awful procession kept moving on--faces were as thick as the tapers glowing in every bracket and candelabra. Bursts of music rose on the wind--a wheezing tune that sobbed of past jubilation. Suddenly all the Knickerbockers gasped. Stern Judge Knickerbocker, who had rarely smiled in life, was seen advancing, bent double with laughter and clinging to a figure in a cardinal hoop. "Oh, let us cover our eyes," whispered Miss Georgina. "This is more than I can bear." "Don't!" said the lady of the banished portrait. "You have often boasted of your family's intimacy with that queer figure. Through your veneration of him, York has made him into quite a hero. It is the friend of one of the first American Knickerbockers--Lord Cornbury! He was addicted to wearing women's furbelows!" "Gazooks!" exclaimed his Lordship, in a tone loud enough for the Knickerbockers to hear. "More of those tiresome impertinents! The next thing the whole of the presumptuous clan will be petitioning me for standing room at my routs." "Don't go any nearer to them," said the Judge, in the tones of a sycophant. "If they bore you, my dear Corny, I am willing to cut them. _You know it is the fashion on earth to recognize only the most desirable_ ancestors, and we can return the compliment. Besides it was decreed that I should be jocular for the next half century, and I'm afraid a too close inspection would cause me to don weepers." The group by the doors felt a sickening sensation in their flaccid frames. Jonathan's partner, knowing how grievously they must all have been affected by the change in their parent, turned her head. A one-eyed hag was advancing to her. She curtsied low, and presented two bits of plaster which had fallen from the ceiling. "Messages," she snickered, fumbling with her hands. "From Marmaduke and Leonidas Barula," read the lady (though no one knows how, for she only observed the niches). "We beg to be excused from coming to-night. To put it mildly, we were raised aloft in Pearl Street Hollow for practising target shooting on coach-drivers, and our necks are still out of joint and not fit to be seen in company." As the merriment waxed louder a Gobie, who had spent her life as a fish-fag, began tapping on the panelled wainscot. With a hoarse guffaw she turned her piercing alaquine eyes on Miss Julie and squinted--"More negus! More here, you slubber-degullions. We Gobies has a thirst. 'Twas what we were noted for in life--not our learning, great-niece," she mocked, as she turned her head and grimaced at Miss Georgina.