“Oh! and do you think he would fall in love with me?” “I should think he would,” said Dibble, astonished that there should be any opening for doubt upon the subject. “Oh, how nice! I often think some grand young gentleman will come into the Temple and fall in love with me; but I never see a real handsome one come in, dressed pretty, you know, and with a little moustache, like the pictures in the tale that I was telling you of. I always looks round the audience to see if there is aireyone as is in love with me; aireyone as I could love, you know. But they are all such a gawky lot. Most of them are in love with me--I know that, of course; but they are hardly worth being made miserable. O, I gives them such looks sometimes!” Christabel seemed to hug herself upon her assumed capacity to make some of the male portion of her audiences unhappily in love with her, and Dibble felt morally certain that it would be impossible for any young gentleman not to fall in love with her; but as for marriage it was nonsense, Dibble told her, to think of that,--such a very young lady as she was; he should think for his part that she ought to be able to conjure some handsome young gentleman into that basket when she disappeared at the touch of her father’s wand--disappeared nobody knew where. But the young lady only laughed at this, and thought it a good joke. What if she could conjure into it that handsome Paul Somerton, she said, who talked so fine! Dibble said that would be splendid, and then Christabel as a further proof of her favour, gave Thomas her royal permission to call her “Chrissy.” Carkey, the clown, had always called her “Chrissy,” and in future Dibble should take the clown’s place, and be her confidant. “But mind,” she said, clenching her little hand, “if you dare to betray me--if you do not keep my secret,--I will not only tell yours, but oh, I don’t know what I will not do besides--shoot you, perhaps, with a pistol, like the lord’s daughter in the tale.” Christabel said this so fiercely that Dibble almost wished she had not confided her secret to him. Just as he was about to make a remark to this effect, there staggered into the room, reeling through the smoke, the showman and his “dawg.” The company hammered their glasses on the tables and shouted “bravo,” as Digby strutted in with the Yorkshire giant and Momus, the giant smiling benignly upon his tipsy friend, and Momus marching in front with her head very erect, and her nose turned towards her proprietor.