“Yes it be, summat near it,” said Dibble. “I ought to know, considerin’ as I lost five hundred pounds in it.” Dibble raised his head, and looked quite important when he thought of his financial experience. “Well I never heard of a panic before,” said Christabel. “I begun to think you must be going off your head--‘off your nut,’ as father calls it--when you talked of bears and bulls, or else that a panic was a menagerie, and you really had been in the profession before.” “No, a panic bain’t a menagerie,” said Dibble; “it’s worse nor anything of that sort; it’s something as you can’t see, but it’s got a way of getting at your money, and swallering of it up in the most outdacious style, and the more it gets, the more you has to give it.” “Why, it must be a menagerie,” said Christabel. “What be a menagerie,--wild beasts?” “Of course, you know that,” said Christabel, a little impatiently. “Well, it’s worse than the awfullest wild beasts as ever you heard on; but you can’t see it. I thought you could myself, and I went into the City and inquired. ‘Where be the panic?’ I says to a porter as I knowed. ‘In there,’ says he, ‘in the Stock Exchange.’ I looked into a place, through a hole, and there I sees above a hundred men, a talking, and shouting, and writing in little books, and going on like Bedlam; but I never see the panic. So I asks a man as was standing close by, and he begun to laugh and told me to inquire of a fat party again the door, and he said I was to ask the Old Woman of Threadneedle-street. I went there, and I see an old ’oman, a selling oranges, which I asked at once. She said she thought that was it, pointing to a great big house; but I never see it, and I ’eard arter, as it was not to be seen, that it was like the devil going about in the character of a roaring lion on the quiet, never letting anybody see ’un.” Dibble was becoming quite garrulous upon the panic, and Christabel sat looking at him with a startled sort of curiosity; she had never heard of such a wonderful animal before; but then, she said, there were no doubt many things of which she was ignorant. “If Carkey had lived,” she went on, “I should have known all about everything, because he said he would teach me, and some day he said I might become a fine lady. Just fancy, wouldn’t that be fizzing, to be a fine lady! If I was to tell your secret, you’d be in an awful way, eh? It would be a reglar do, wouldn’t it?” “Hawful,” said Dibble. “That’s right, ’cause I want to tell you mine. Now, look here.” Christabel looked cautiously round, to see if the miscellaneous company were occupied. Convinced that nobody was watching them, she took from her bosom a small miniature. “Now, you see that?” she said, in a whisper. “Yes,” said Dibble, fully expecting to see it changed into a pigeon or something more wonderful still, in the way of conjuring.