'
'Including the paper on "Hamlet and Hamalet, and the wide region of
Nowhere"?'
'Including that and everything.'
'Did you know him, Mr. Wilderspin?'
'Not in the flesh; in the spirit, who knows him so well? Your mother
I have had the pleasure of meeting at the house of Lord Sleaford, and
indeed I have had the distinguished honour of painting her portrait;
but the great author of _The Veiled Queen_--the inspired designer of
the vignette symbolical of the Renascence of Wonder in Art--I never
had the rapture of seeing. This very day, the anniversary of his
birth,' he continued, 'is a great day in the Aylwinian calendar.'
'My father's birthday? Why, so it is!'
'Mr. Aylwin, is it possible that the anniversary of a day so
momentous for the world is forgotten--forgotten by the very issue of
the great man's loins?'
'The fact is,' said I, in some confusion, 'I have been living with
the Gypsies, and, you see, Mr. Wilderspin, the passage of time--'
'The son of Philip Aylwin a Gypsy!' murmured Wilderspin meditatively,
and unconscious evidently that he was speaking aloud--'a Gypsy! Still
it would surely be a mistake to suppose,' he continued, perfectly
oblivious now of my presence, 'that the vagaries of his son can
really bring shame upon the head of the father.
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