“Oh, have you found a new beast? Oh Johnny, let us see it, let us see it! Oh, but it’s nothing but a jeely-fish,” cried, in a number of voices, the little crowd. Johnny walked calmly on, his bare head red in the sunshine, with crisp short curls surrounding a forehead which was very white in the upper part, where usually sheltered by his bonnet, and a fine red brown mahogany tint below. Johnny was quite at his ease amid the encircling, shouting little crowd, from out of which Elsie withdrew at the garden gate, with a wave of her hand. He had no objection to their questions, their jests, their cries of “Let us see it, Johnny!” It did not in the least trouble him that he was Johnny to all the world, and his “new beast” the diversion of the town. CHAPTER XIX. A CATASTROPHE. Mrs. Mowbray was more restless than her maid, who had been with her for many years, had ever seen her before. She was not at any time a model of a tranquil woman, but ever since her arrival in St. Rule’s, her activity had been incessant, and very disturbing to her household. She was neither quiet during the day nor did she sleep at night. She was out and in of the house a hundred times of a morning, and even when within doors was so continually in motion, that the maids who belonged to the house, and had been old Mr. Anderson’s servants, held a meeting, and decided that if things went on like this, they would all “speak” when the appointed moment for speaking came, and leave at the next term. Mrs. Mowbray’s own maid, who was specially devoted to her, had a heavier thought on her mind; for the mistress was so unlike herself, that it seemed to this good woman that she must be “off her head,” or in a fair way of becoming so. There was no one to take notice of this alarming condition of affairs, for what was to be expected from Mr. Frank? He was a young man: he was taken up with his own concerns. It was not to be supposed that his mother’s state would call forth any anxiety on his part, until it went much further than it yet had gone. And there were no intimate friends who could be appealed to. There was no one to exercise any control, even if it had been certain that there was occasion for exercising control. And that had not occurred as yet. But she was so restless, that she could not keep still anywhere for half-an-hour. She was constantly on the stairs, going up and down, or in the street, taking little walks, making little calls, staying only a few minutes. She could not rest. In the middle of the night, she might be seen up wandering about the house in her dressing-gown, with a candle in her hand: though when any one was startled, and awakened by the sound of her nocturnal wanderings, she was always apologetic, explaining that she had forgotten something in the drawing-room, or wanted a book.