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
family--insisted on my never drawing another caricature, either for
public or private purposes, as long as I lived; and ordered me to go
forthwith and ask pardon of Lady Malkinshaw in the humblest terms that
it was possible to select. I answered dutifully that I was quite ready
to obey, on the condition that he should reimburse me by a trebled
allowance for what I should lose by giving up the Art of Caricature,
or that Lady Malkinshaw should confer on me the appointment of
physician-in-waiting on her, with a handsome salary attached. These
extremely moderate stipulations so increased my father's anger, that he
asserted, with an unmentionably vulgar oath, his resolution to turn me
out of doors if I did not do as he bid me, without daring to hint at
any conditions whatsoever. I bowed, and said that I would save him the
exertion of turning me out of doors, by going of my own accord. He shook
his fist at me; after which it obviously became my duty, as a member
of a gentlemanly and peaceful profession, to leave the room. The same
evening I left the house, and I have never once given the clumsy and
expensive footman the trouble of answering the door to me since that
time.