of fashionable society--that he was helping me to study likenesses which
were destined under my reckless treatment to make the public laugh at
some of his most august patrons, and to fill the pockets of his son with
professional fees, never once dreamed of in his philosophy.

For more than a year I managed, unsuspected, to keep the Privy Purse
fairly supplied by the exercise of my caricaturing abilities. But the
day of detection was to come.

Whether my medical friend's admiration of my satirical sketches led him
into talking about them in public with too little reserve; or whether
the servants at home found private means of watching me in my moments
of Art-study, I know not: but that some one betrayed me, and that
the discovery of my illicit manufacture of caricatures was actually
communicated even to the grandmotherly head and fount of the family
honor, is a most certain and lamentable matter of fact. One morning my
father received a letter from Lady Malkinshaw herself, informing him,
in a handwriting crooked with poignant grief, and blotted at every third
word by the violence of virtuous indignation, that "Thersites Junior"
was his own son, and that, in one of the last of the "ribald's"
caricatures her own venerable features were unmistakably represented as
belonging to the body of a large owl!

Of course, I laid my hand on my heart and indignantly denied everything.
Useless. My original model for the owl had got proofs of my guilt that
were not to be resisted.

The doctor, ordinarily the most mellifluous and self-possessed of
men, flew into a violent, roaring, cursing passion, on this
occasion--declared that I was imperiling the honor and standing of the