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+The Project Gutenberg EBook What Will He Do With It, by Lytton, V1
+#87 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: What Will He Do With It, Book 1.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7659]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 1, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT
+
+BY
+
+"PISISTRATUS CAXTON"
+
+(LORD LYTTON)
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL.  I.
+
+
+WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?
+
+BOOK I.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     In which the history opens with a description of the social manners,
+     habits, and amusements of the English People, as exhibited in an
+     immemorial National Festivity.--Characters to be commemorated in the
+     history, introduced and graphically portrayed, with a nasological
+     illustration.--Original suggestions as to the idiosyncrasies
+     engendered by trades and callings, with other matters worthy of
+     note, conveyed in artless dialogue after the manner of Herodotus,
+     Father of History (mother unknown).
+
+
+It was a summer fair in one of the prettiest villages in Surrey.  The
+main street was lined with booths, abounding in toys, gleaming crockery,
+gay ribbons, and gilded ginger bread.  Farther on, where the street
+widened into the ample village-green, rose the more pretending fabrics
+which lodged the attractive forms of the Mermaid, the Norfolk Giant; the
+Pig-faced Lady, the Spotted Boy, and the Calf with Two Heads; while high
+over even these edifices, and occupying the most conspicuous vantage-
+ground, a lofty stage promised to rural playgoers the "Grand Melodramatic
+Performance of The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child."  Music,
+lively if artless, resounded on every side,--drums, fifes, penny-
+whistles, cat-calls, and a hand-organ played by a dark foreigner, from
+the height of whose shoulder a cynical but observant monkey eyed the
+hubbub and cracked his nuts.
+
+It was now sunset,--the throng at the fullest,--an animated, joyous
+scene.  The, day had been sultry; no clouds were to be seen, except low
+on the western horizon, where they stretched, in lengthened ridges of
+gold and purple, like the border-land between earth and sky.  The tall
+elms on the green were still, save, near the great stage, one or two,
+upon which had climbed young urchins, whose laughing faces peered forth,
+here and there, from the foliage trembling under their restless
+movements.
+
+Amidst the crowd, as it streamed saunteringly along, were two spectators;
+strangers to the place, as was notably proved by the attention they
+excited, and the broad jokes their dress and appearance provoked from the
+rustic wits,--jokes which they took with amused good-humour, and
+sometimes retaliated with a zest which had already made them very popular
+personages.  Indeed, there was that about them which propitiated liking.
+They were young; and the freshness of enjoyment was so visible in their
+faces, that it begot a sympathy, and wherever they went, other faces
+brightened round them.
+
+One of the two whom we have thus individualized was of that enviable age,
+ranging from five-and-twenty to seven-and-twenty, in which, if a man
+cannot contrive to make life very pleasant,--pitiable indeed must be the
+state of his digestive organs.  But you might see by this gentleman's
+countenance that if there were many like him, it would be a worse world
+for the doctors.  His cheek, though not highly coloured, was yet ruddy
+and clear; his hazel eyes were lively and keen; his hair, which escaped
+in loose clusters from a jean shooting-cap set jauntily on a well-shaped
+head, was of that deep sunny auburn rarely seen but in persons of
+vigorous and hardy temperament.  He was good-looking on the whole, and
+would have deserved the more flattering epithet of handsome, but for his
+nose, which was what the French call "a nose in the air,"--not a nose
+supercilious, not a nose provocative, as such noses mostly are, but a
+nose decidedly in earnest to make the best of itself and of things in
+general,--a nose that would push its way up in life, but so pleasantly
+that the most irritable fingers would never itch to lay hold of it.  With
+such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even
+write poetry, and yet not go to the dogs.
+
+Never would he stick in the mud so long as he followed that nose in the
+air.
+
+By the help of that nose this gentleman wore a black velveteen jacket of
+foreign cut; a mustache and imperial (then much rarer in England than
+they have been since the Siege of Sebastopol); and yet left you perfectly
+convinced that he was an honest Englishman, who had not only no designs
+on your pocket, but would not be easily duped by any designs upon his
+own.
+
+The companion of the personage thus sketched might be somewhere about
+seventeen; but his gait, his air, his lithe, vigorous frame, showed a
+manliness at variance with the boyish bloom of his face.  He struck the
+eye much more than his elder comrade.  Not that he was regularly
+handsome,--far from it; yet it is no paradox to say that he was
+beautiful, at least, few indeed were the women who would not have called
+him so.  His hair, long like his friend's, was of a dark chestnut, with
+gold gleaming through it where the sun fell, inclining to curl, and
+singularly soft and silken in its texture.  His large, clear, dark-blue,
+happy eyes were fringed with long ebon lashes, and set under brows which
+already wore the expression of intellectual power, and, better still, of
+frank courage and open loyalty.  His complexion was fair, and somewhat
+pale, and his lips in laughing showed teeth exquisitely white and even.
+But though his profile was clearly cut, it was far from the Greek ideal;
+and he wanted the height of stature which is usually considered essential
+to the personal pretensions of the male sex.  Without being positively
+short, he was still under middle height, and from the compact development
+of his proportions, seemed already to have attained his full growth.  His
+dress, though not foreign, like his comrade's, was peculiar: a broad-
+brimmed straw hat, with a wide blue ribbon; shirt collar turned down,
+leaving the throat bare; a dark-green jacket of thinner material than
+cloth; white trousers and waistcoat completed his costume.  He looked
+like a mother's darling,--perhaps he was one.
+
+Scratch across his back went one of those ingenious mechanical
+contrivances familiarly in vogue at fairs, which are designed to impress
+upon the victim to whom they are applied, the pleasing conviction that
+his garment is rent in twain.
+
+The boy turned round so quickly that he caught the arm of the offender,--
+a pretty village-girl, a year or two younger than himself.  "Found in the
+act, sentenced, punished," cried he, snatching a kiss, and receiving a
+gentle slap.  "And now, good for evil, here's a ribbon for you; choose."
+
+The girl slunk back shyly, but her companions pushed her forward, and she
+ended by selecting a cherry-coloured ribbon, for which the boy paid
+carelessly, while his elder and wiser friend looked at him with grave,
+compassionate rebuke, and grumbled out,--"Dr. Franklin tells us that once
+in his life he paid too dear for a whistle; but then he was only seven
+years old, and a whistle has its uses.  But to pay such a price for a
+scratch-back!--Prodigal!  Come along."
+
+As the friends strolled on, naturally enough all the young girls who
+wished for ribbons, and were possessed of scratch-backs, followed in
+their wake.  Scratch went the instrument, but in vain.
+
+"Lasses," said the elder, turning sharply upon them his nose in the air,
+"ribbons are plentiful,--shillings scarce; and kisses, though pleasant in
+private, are insipid in public.  What, still!  Beware!  know that,
+innocent as we seem, we are women-eaters; and if you follow us farther,
+you are devoured!  "So saying, he expanded his jaws to a width so
+preternaturally large, and exhibited a row of grinders so formidable,
+that the girls fell back in consternation.  The friends turned down a
+narrow alley between the booths, and though still pursued by some
+adventurous and mercenary spirits, were comparatively undisturbed as they
+threaded their way along the back of the booths, and arrived at last on
+the village-green, and in front of the Great Stage.
+
+"Oho, Lionel!"  quoth the elder friend; "Thespian and classical,--worth
+seeing, no doubt."  Then turning to a grave cobbler in leathern apron,
+who was regarding with saturnine interest the motley figures ranged in
+front of the curtain as the Drumatis Persona, he said, "You seem
+attracted, sir; you have probably already witnessed the performance."
+"Yes," returned the Cobbler; "this is the third day, and to-morrow's the
+last.  I are n't missed once yet, and I sha' n't miss; but it are n't
+what it was a while back."
+
+"'That is sad; but then the same thing is said of everything by everybody
+who has reached your respectable age, friend.  Summers, and suns, stupid
+old watering-places, and pretty young women, `are n't what they were a
+while back.'  If men and things go on degenerating in this way, our
+grandchildren will have a dull time of it."
+
+The Cobbler eyed the young man, and nodded approvingly.  He had sense
+enough to comprehend the ironical philosophy of the reply; and our
+Cobbler loved talk out of the common way.  "You speaks truly and
+cleverly, sir.  But if old folks do always say that things are worse than
+they were, ben't there always summat in what is always said?  I'm for the
+old times; my neighbour, Joe Spruce, is for the new, and says we are all
+a-progressing.  But he 's a pink; I 'm a blue."
+
+"You are a blue?"  said the boy Lionel; "I don't understand."
+
+"Young 'un, I'm a Tory,--that's blue; and Spruce is a Rad,--that's pink!
+And, what is more to the purpose, he is a tailor, and I'm a cobbler."
+
+"Aha!" said the elder, with much interest; "more to the purpose is it?
+How so?"
+
+The Cobbler put the forefinger of the right hand on the forefinger of the
+left; it is the gesture of a man about to ratiocinate or demonstrate, as
+Quintilian, in his remarks on the oratory of fingers, probably observes;
+or if he has failed to do so, it is a blot in his essay.
+
+"You see, sir," quoth the Cobbler, "that a man's business has a deal to
+do with his manner of thinking.  Every trade, I take it, has ideas as
+belong to it.  Butchers don't see life as bakers do; and if you talk to a
+dozen tallow-chandlers, then to a dozen blacksmiths, you will see tallow-
+chandlers are peculiar, and blacksmiths too."
+
+"You are a keen observer," said he of the jean cap, admiringly; "your
+remark is new to me; I dare say it is true."
+
+"Course it is; and the stars have summat to do with it; for if they order
+a man's calling, it stands to reason that they order a man's mind to fit
+it.  Now, a tailor sits on his board with others, and is always a-talking
+with 'em, and a-reading the news; therefore he thinks, as his fellows do,
+smart and sharp, bang up to the day, but nothing 'riginal and all his
+own, like.  But a cobbler," continued the man of leather, with a majestic
+air, "sits by hisself, and talks with hisself; and what he thinks gets
+into his head without being put there by another man's tongue."
+
+"You enlighten me more and more," said our friend with the nose in the
+air, bowing respectfully,--"a tailor is gregarious, a cobbler solitary.
+The gregarious go with the future, the solitary stick by the past.  I
+understand why you are a Tory and perhaps a poet."
+
+"Well, a bit of one," said the Cobbler, with an iron smile.  "And many 's
+the cobbler who is a poet,--or discovers marvellous things in a crystal,
+--whereas a tailor, sir" (spoken with great contempt), "only sees the
+upper leather of the world's sole in a newspaper."
+
+Here the conversation was interrupted by a sudden pressure of the crowd
+towards the theatre.  The two young friends looked up, and saw that the
+new object of attraction was a little girl, who seemed scarcely ten years
+old, though in truth she was about two years older.  She had just emerged
+from behind the curtain, made her obeisance to the crowd, and was now
+walking in front of the stage with the prettiest possible air of
+infantine solemnity.  "Poor little thing!" said Lionel.  "Poor little
+thing!"  said the Cobbler.  And had you been there, my reader, ten to one
+but you would have said the same.  And yet she was attired in white
+satin, with spangled flounces and a tinsel jacket; and she wore a wreath
+of flowers (to be sure, the flowers were not real) on her long fair
+curls, with gaudy bracelets (to be sure, the stones were mock) on her
+slender arms.  Still there was something in her that all this finery
+could not vulgarize; and since it could not vulgarize, you pitied her for
+it.  She had one of those charming faces that look straight into the
+hearts of us all, young and old.  And though she seemed quite self-
+possessed, there was no effrontery in her air, but the ease of a little
+lady, with a simple child's unconsciousness that there was anything in
+her situation to induce you to sigh, "Poor thing!"
+
+"You should see her act, young gents," said the Cobbler: "she plays
+uncommon.  But if you had seen him as taught her,--seen him a year ago."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"Waife, sir; mayhap you have heard speak of Waife?"
+
+"I blush to say, no."
+
+"Why, he might have made his fortune at Common Garden; but that's a long
+story.  Poor fellow! he's broke down now, anyhow.  But she takes care of
+him, little darling: God bless thee!" and the Cobbler here exchanged a
+smile and a nod with the little girl, whose face brightened when she saw
+him amidst the crowd.
+
+"By the brush and pallet of Raphael!" cried the elder of the young men,
+"before I am many hours older I must have that child's head!"
+
+"Her head, man!" cried the Cobbler, aghast.
+
+"In my sketch-book.  You are a poet,--I a painter.  You know the little
+girl?"
+
+"Don't I!  She and her grandfather lodge with me; her grandfather,--
+that's Waife,--marvellous man!  But they ill-uses him; and if it warn't
+for her, he'd starve.  He fed them all once: he can feed them no longer;
+he'd starve.  That's the world: they use up a genus, and when it falls on
+the road, push on; that's what Joe Spruce calls a-progressing.  But
+there's the drum! they're a-going to act; won't you look in, gents?"
+
+"Of course," cried Lionel,--"of course.  And, hark ye, Vance, we'll toss
+up which shall be the first to take that little girl's head."
+
+"Murderer in either sense of the word!"  said Vance, with a smile that
+would have become Correggio if a tyro had offered to toss up which should
+be the first to paint a cherub.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     The historian takes a view of the British stage as represented by
+     the irregular drama, the regular having (ere the date of the events
+     to which this narrative is restricted) disappeared from the vestiges
+     of creation.
+
+They entered the little theatre, and the Cobbler with them; but the last
+retired modestly to the threepenny row.  The young gentlemen were
+favoured with reserved seats, price one shilling.  "Very dear," murmured
+Vance, as he carefully buttoned the pocket to which he restored a purse
+woven from links of steel, after the fashion of chain mail.  Ah,
+Messieurs and Confreres the Dramatic Authors, do not flatter yourselves
+that we are about to give you a complacent triumph over the Grand
+Melodrame of "The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child."  We grant it
+was horrible rubbish, regarded in an aesthetic point of view, but it was
+mighty effective in the theatrical.  Nobody yawned; you did not even hear
+a cough, nor the cry of that omnipresent baby, who is always sure to set
+up an unappeasable wail in the midmost interest of a classical five-act
+piece, represented for the first time on the metropolitan boards.  Here
+the story rushed on, /per fas aut nefas/, and the audience went with it.
+Certes, some man who understood the stage must have put the incidents
+together, and then left it to each illiterate histrio to find the words,
+--words, my dear confreres, signify so little in an acting play.  The
+movement is the thing.  Grand secret!  Analyze, practise it, and restore
+to grateful stars that lost Pleiad the British Acting Drama.
+
+Of course the Bandit was an ill-used and most estimable man.  He had some
+mysterious rights to the Estate and Castle of the Remorseless Baron.
+That titled usurper, therefore, did all in his power to hunt the Bandit
+out in his fastnesses and bring him to a bloody end.  Here the interest
+centred itself in the Bandit's child, who, we need not say, was the
+little girl in the wreath and spangles, styled in the playbill "Miss
+Juliet Araminta Wife," and the incidents consisted in her various devices
+to foil the pursuit of the Baron and save her father.  Some of these
+incidents were indebted to the Comic Muse, and kept the audience in a
+broad laugh.  Her arch playfulness here was exquisite.  With what
+vivacity she duped the High Sheriff, who had the commands of his king to
+take the Bandit alive or dead, into the belief that the very Lawyer
+employed by the Baron was the criminal in disguise, and what pearly teeth
+she showed when the Lawyer was seized and gagged! how dexterously she
+ascertained the weak point in the character of the "King's Lieutenant"
+(jeune premier), who was deputed by his royal master to aid the
+Remorseless Baron in trouncing the Bandit! how cunningly she learned that
+he was in love with the Baron's ward (jeune amoureuse), whom that
+unworthy noble intended to force into a marriage with himself on account
+of her fortune! how prettily she passed notes to and fro, the Lieutenant
+never suspecting that she was the Bandit's child, and at last got the
+king's soldier on her side, as the event proved!  And oh, how gayly, and
+with what mimic art, she stole into the Baron's castle, disguised as a
+witch, startled his conscience with revelations and predictions,
+frightened all the vassals with blue lights and chemical illusions, and
+venturing even into the usurper's own private chamber, while the tyrant
+was tossing restless on the couch, over which hung his terrible sword,
+abstracted from his coffer the deeds that proved the better rights of the
+persecuted Bandit!  Then, when he woke before she could escape with her
+treasure, and pursued her with his sword, with what glee she apparently
+set herself on fire, and skipped out of the casement in an explosion of
+crackers!  And when the drama approached its /denouement/, when the
+Baron's men, and the royal officers of justice, had, despite all her
+arts, tracked the Bandit to the cave, in which, after various retreats,
+he lay hidden, wounded by shots, and bruised by a fall from a precipice,
+--with what admirable byplay she hovered around the spot, with what
+pathos she sought to decoy away the pursuers! it was the skylark playing
+round the nest.  And when all was vain,--when, no longer to be deceived,
+the enemies sought to seize her, how mockingly she eluded them, bounded
+up the rock, and shook her slight finger at them in scorn!  Surely she
+will save that estimable Bandit still!  Now, hitherto, though the Bandit
+was the nominal hero of the piece, though you were always hearing of
+him,--his wrongs, virtues, hairbreadth escapes,--he had never been seen.
+Not Mrs. Harris, in the immortal narrative, was more quoted and more
+mythical.  But in the last scene there was the Bandit, there in his
+cavern, helpless with bruises and wounds, lying on a rock.  In rushed the
+enemies, Baron, High Sheriff, and all, to seize him.  Not a word spoke
+the Bandit, but his attitude was sublime,--even Vance cried "bravo;" and
+just as he is seized, halter round his neck, and about to be hanged, down
+from the chasm above leaps his child, holding the title-deeds, filched
+from the Baron, and by her side the King's Lieutenant, who proclaims the
+Bandit's pardon, with due restoration to his honours and estates, and
+consigns to the astounded Sheriff the august person of the Remorseless
+Baron.  Then the affecting scene, father and child in each other's arms;
+and then an exclamation, which had been long hovering about the lips of
+many of the audience, broke out, "Waife, Waife!"  Yes, the Bandit, who
+appeared but in the last scene, and even then uttered not a word, was the
+once great actor on that itinerant Thespian stage, known through many a
+fair for his exuberant humour, his impromptu jokes, his arch eye, his
+redundant life of drollery, and the strange pathos or dignity with which
+he could suddenly exalt a jester's part, and call forth tears in the
+startled hush of laughter; he whom the Cobbler had rightly said, "might
+have made a fortune at Covent Garden."  There was the remnant of the old
+popular mime!--all his attributes of eloquence reduced to dumb show!
+Masterly touch of nature and of art in this representation of him,--touch
+which all who had ever in former years seen and heard him on that stage
+felt simultaneously.  He came in for his personal portion of dramatic
+tears.  "Waife, Waife!"  cried many a village voice, as the little girl
+led him to the front of the stage.
+
+He hobbled; there was a bandage round his eyes.  The plot, in describing
+the accident that had befallen the Bandit, idealized the genuine
+infirmities of the man,--infirmities that had befallen him since last
+seen in that village.  He was blind of one eye; he had become crippled;
+some malady of the trachea or larynx had seemingly broken up the once
+joyous key of the old pleasant voice.  He did not trust himself to speak,
+even on that stage, but silently bent his head to the rustic audience;
+and Vance, who was an habitual playgoer, saw in that simple salutation
+that the man was an artistic actor.  All was over, the audience streamed
+out, much affected, and talking one to the other.  It had not been at all
+like the ordinary stage exhibitions at a village fair.  Vance and Lionel
+exchanged looks of surprise, and then, by a common impulse, moved towards
+the stage, pushed aside the curtain, which had fallen, and were in that
+strange world which has so many reduplications, fragments of one broken
+mirror, whether in the proudest theatre or the lowliest barn,--nay,
+whether in the palace of kings, the cabinet of statesmen, the home of
+domestic life,--the world we call "Behind the Scenes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Striking illustrations of lawless tyranny and infant avarice
+     exemplified in the social conditions of Great Britain.--
+     Superstitions of the dark ages still in force amongst the trading
+     community, furnishing valuable hints to certain American
+     journalists, and highly suggestive of reflections humiliating to the
+     national vanity.
+
+The Remorseless Baron, who was no other than the managerial proprietor of
+the stage, was leaning against a sidescene with a pot of porter in his
+hand.  The King's Lieutenant might be seen on the background, toasting a
+piece of cheese on the point of his loyal sword.  The Bandit had crept
+into a corner, and the little girl was clinging to him fondly as his hand
+was stroking her fair hair.  Vance looked round, and approached the
+Bandit,--"Sir, allow me to congratulate you; your bow was admirable.  I
+have never seen John Kemble; before my time: but I shall fancy I have
+seen him now,--seen him on the night of his retirement from the stage.
+As to your grandchild, Miss Juliet Araminta, she is a perfect
+chrysolite."
+
+Before Mr. Waife could reply, the Remorseless Baron stepped up in a
+spirit worthy of his odious and arbitrary character.  "What do you do
+here, sir?  I allow no conspirators behind the scenes earwigging my
+people."
+
+"I beg pardon respectfully: I am an artist,--a pupil of the Royal
+Academy; I should like to make a sketch of Miss Juliet Araminta."
+
+"Sketch! nonsense."
+
+"Sir," said Lionel, with the seasonable extravagance of early youth, "my
+friend would, I am sure, pay for the sitting--handsomely!"
+
+"Ha!" said the manager, softened, "you speak like a gentleman, sir: but,
+sir, Miss Juliet Araminta is under my protection; in fact, she is my
+property.  Call and speak to me about it to-morrow, before the first
+performance begins, which is twelve o'clock.  Happy to see any of your
+friends in the reserved seats.  Busy now, and--and--in short--excuse me
+--servant, sir--servant, sir."
+
+The Baron's manner left no room for further parley.  Vance bowed, smiled,
+and retreated.  But meanwhile his young friend had seized the opportunity
+to speak both to Waife and his grandchild; and when Vance took his arm
+and drew him away, there was a puzzled, musing expression on Lionel's
+face, and he remained silent till they had got through the press of such
+stragglers as still loitered before the stage, and were in a quiet corner
+of the sward.  Stars and moon were then up,--a lovely summer night.
+
+"What on earth are you thinking of, Lionel?  I have put to you three
+questions, and you have not answered one."
+
+"Vance," answered Lionel, slowly, "the oddest thing!  I am  so
+disappointed  in  that  little  girl,--greedy  and mercenary!"
+
+"Precocious villain!  how do you know that she is greedy and mercenary?"
+
+"Listen: when that surly old manager came up to you, I said something--
+civil, of course--to Waife, who answered in a hoarse, broken voice, but
+in very good language.  Well, when I told the manager that you would pay
+for the sitting, the child caught hold of my arm hastily, pulled me down
+to her own height, and whispered, 'How much will he give?'  Confused by a
+question so point-blank, I answered at random, 'I don't know; ten
+shillings, perhaps.'  You should have seen her face!"
+
+"See her face! radiant,--I should think so.  Too much by half!"
+exclaimed Vance.  "Ten shillings!  Spendthrift!"  "Too much!  she looked
+as you might look if one offered you ten shillings for your picture of
+'Julius Cmsar considering whether he should cross the Rubicon.'  But when
+the manager had declared her to be his property, and appointed you to
+call to-morrow,--implying that he was to be paid for allowing her to
+sit,--her countenance became overcast, and she muttered sullenly, 'I'll
+not sit; I'll not!'  Then she turned to her grandfather, and something
+very quick and close was whispered between the two; and she pulled me by
+the sleeve, and said in my ear--oh, but so eagerly!--'I want three
+pounds, sir,--three pounds!--if he would give three pounds; and come to
+our lodgings,--Mr. Merle, Willow Lane.  Three pounds,--three!,'  And with
+those words hissing in my ear, and coming from that fairy mouth, which
+ought to drop pearls and diamonds, I left her," added Lionel, as gravely
+as if he were sixty, "and lost an illusion!"
+
+"Three pounds!"  cried Vance, raising his eyebrows to the highest arch of
+astonishment, and lifting his nose in the air towards the majestic moon,
+--"three pounds!--a fabulous sum!  Who has three pounds to throw away?
+Dukes, with a hundred thousand a year in acres, have not three pounds to
+draw out of their pockets in that reckless, profligate manner.  Three
+pounds!--what could I not buy for three pounds?  I could buy the Dramatic
+Library, bound in calf, for three pounds; I could buy a dress coat for
+three pounds (silk lining not included); I could be lodged for a month
+for three pounds!  And a jade in tinsel, just entering on her teens, to
+ask three pounds for what? for becoming immortal on the canvas of Francis
+Vance?--bother!"
+
+Here Vance felt a touch on his shoulder.  He turned round quickly, as a
+man out of temper does under similar circumstances, and beheld the sweat
+face of the Cobbler.
+
+"Well, master, did not she act fine?--how d'ye like her?"
+
+"Not much in her natural character; but she sets a mighty high value on
+herself."
+
+"Anan, I don't take you."
+
+"She'll not catch me taking her!  Three pounds!--three kingdoms!  Stay,"
+cried Lionel to the Cobbler; "did not you say she lodged with you?  Are
+you Mr. Merle?"
+
+"Merle's my name, and she do lodge with me,--Willow Lane."
+
+"Come this way, then, a few yards down the road,--more quiet.  Tell me
+what the child means, if you can;" and Lionel related the offer of his
+friend, the reply of the manager, and the grasping avarice of Miss Juliet
+Araminta.
+
+The Cobbler made no answer; and when the young friends, surprised at his
+silence, turned to look at him, they saw he was wiping his eyes with his
+sleeves.
+
+"Poor little thing!"  he said at last, and still more pathetically than
+he had uttered the same words at her appearance in front of the stage;
+"'tis all for her grandfather; I guess,--I guess."
+
+"Oh," cried Lionel, joyfully, "I am so glad to think that.  It alters the
+whole case, you see, Vance."
+
+"It don't alter the case of the three pounds," grumbled Vance.  "What's
+her grandfather to me, that I should give his grandchild three pounds,
+when any other child in the village would have leaped out of her skin to
+have her face upon my sketch-book and five shillings in her pocket?  Hang
+her grandfather!"
+
+They were now in the main road.  The Cobbler seated himself on a lonely
+milestone, and looked first at one of the faces before him, then at the
+other; that of Lionel seemed to attract him the most, and in speaking it
+was Lionel whom he addressed.
+
+"Young master," he said, "it is now just four years ago, when Mr. Rugge,
+coming here, as he and his troop had done at fair-time ever sin' I can
+mind of, brought with him the man you have seen to-night, William Waife;
+I calls him Gentleman Waife.  However that man fell into sick straits,
+how he came to join sich a carawan, would puzzle most heads.  It puzzles
+Joe Spruce, uncommon; it don't puzzle me."
+
+"Why?" asked Vance.
+
+"Cos of Saturn!"
+
+"Satan?"
+
+"Saturn,--dead agin his Second and Tenth House, I'll swear.  Lord of
+Ascendant, mayhap; in combustion of the Sun,--who knows?"
+
+"You're not an astrologer?"  said Vance, suspiciously, edging off.
+
+"Bit of it; no offence."
+
+"What does it signify?"  said Lionel, impatiently; "go on.  So you called
+Mr. Waife 'Gentleman Waife;' and if you had not been an astrologer you
+would have been puzzled to see him in such a calling."
+
+"Ay, that's it; for he warn't like any as we ever see on these boards
+hereabouts; and yet he warn't exactly like a Lunnon actor, as I have seen
+'em in Lunnon, either, but more like a clever fellow who acted for the
+spree of the thing.  He had sich droll jests, and looked so comical, yet
+not commonlike, but always what I calls a gentleman,--just as if one o'
+ye two were doing a bit of sport to please your friends.  Well, he drew
+hugely, and so he did, every time he came, so that the great families in
+the neighbourhood would go to hear him; and he lodged in my house, and
+had pleasant ways with him, and was what I call a scollard.  But still I
+don't want to deceive ye, and I should judge him to have been a wild dog
+in his day.  Mercury ill-aspected,--not a doubt of it.  Last year it so
+happened that one of the great gents who belong to a Lunnon theatre was
+here at fair-time.  Whether he had heard of Waife chanceways, and come
+express to judge for hisself, I can't say; like eno'.  And when he had
+seen Gentleman Waife act, he sent for him to the inn--Red Lion--and
+offered him a power o' money to go to Lunnon,--Common Garden.  Well, sir,
+Waife did not take to it all at once, but hemmed and hawed, and was at
+last quite coaxed into it, and so he went.  But bad luck came on it; and
+I knew there would, for I saw it all in my crystal."
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Vance, "a crystal, too; really it is getting late, and if
+you had your crystal about you, you might see that we want to sup."
+
+"What happened?"  asked Lionel, more blandly, for he saw the Cobbler, who
+had meant to make a great effect by the introduction of the crystal, was
+offended.
+
+"What happened?  why, just what I foreseed.  There was an accident in the
+railway 'tween this and Lunnon, and poor Waife lost an eye, and was a
+cripple for life: so he could not go on the Lunnon stage at all; and what
+was worse, he was a long time atwixt life and death, and got summat bad
+on his chest wi' catching cold, and lost his voice, and became the sad
+object you have gazed on, young happy things that ye are."
+
+"But he got some compensation from the railway, I suppose?"  said Vance,
+with the unfeeling equanimity of a stoical demon.
+
+"He did, and spent it.  I suppose the gentleman broke out in him as soon
+as he had money, and, ill though he was, the money went.  Then it seems
+he had no help for it but to try and get back to Mr. Rugge.  But Mr.
+Rugge was sore and spiteful at his leaving; for Rugge counted on him, and
+had even thought of taking the huge theatre at York, and bringing out
+Gentleman Waife as his trump card.  But it warn't fated, and Rugge
+thought himself ill-used, and so at first he would have nothing more to
+say to Waife.  And truth is, what could the poor man do for Rugge?  But
+then Waife produces little Sophy."
+
+"You mean Juliet Araminta?"  said Vance.
+
+"Same--in private life she be Sophy.  And Waife taught her to act, and
+put together the plays for her.  And Rugge caught at her; and she
+supports Waife with what she gets; for Rugge only gives him four
+shillings a week, and that goes on 'baccy and such like."
+
+"Such like--drink, I presume?" said Vance.
+
+"No--he don't drink.  But he do smoke, and he has little genteel ways
+with him, and four shillings goes on 'em.  And they have been about the
+country this spring, and done well, and now they be here.  But Rugge
+behaves shocking hard to both on 'em: and I don't believe he has any
+right to her in law, as he pretends,--only a sort of understanding which
+she and her grandfather could break if they pleased; and that's what they
+wish to do, and that's why little Sophy wants the three pounds."
+
+"How?"  cried Lionel, eagerly.  "If they had three pounds could they get
+away? and if they did, how could they live?  Where could they go?"
+
+"That's their secret.  But I heard Waife say--the first night they came
+here--I that if he could get three pounds, he had hit on a plan to be
+independent like.  I tell you what put his back up: it was Rugge
+insisting on his coming on the stage agin, for he did not like to be seen
+such a wreck.  But he was forced to give in; and so he contrived to cut
+up that play-story, and appear hisself at the last without speaking."
+
+"My good friend," cried young Lionel, "we are greatly obliged to you for
+your story; and we should much like to see little Sophy and her
+grandfather at your house to-morrow,--can we?"
+
+"Certain sure you can, after the play's over; to-night, if you like."
+
+"No, to-morrow: you see my friend is impatient to get back now; we will
+call to-morrow."
+
+"'T is the last day of their stay," said the Cobbler.  "But you can't be
+sure to see them safely at my house afore ten o'clock at night; and not a
+word to Rugge! mum!"
+
+"Not a word to Rugge," returned Lionel; "good-night to you."
+
+The young men left the Cobbler still seated on the milestone, gazing on
+the stars and ruminating.  They walked briskly down the road.
+
+"It is I who have had the talk now," said Lionel, in his softest tone.
+He was bent on coaxing three pounds out of his richer friend, and that
+might require some management.  For amongst the wild youngsters in Mr.
+Vance's profession, there ran many a joke at the skill with which he
+parried irregular assaults on his purse; and that gentleman, with his
+nose more than usually in the air, having once observed to such scoffers
+"that they were quite welcome to any joke at his expense," a wag had
+exclaimed, "At your expense!  Don't fear; if a joke were worth a
+farthing, you would never give that permission."
+
+So when Lionel made that innocent remark, the softness of his tone warned
+the artist of some snake in the grass, and he prudently remained silent.
+Lionel, in a voice still sweeter, repeated,--"It is I who have all the
+talk now!"
+
+"Naturally," then returned Vance, "naturally you have, for it is you,
+I suspect, who alone have the intention to pay for it, and three pounds
+appear to be the price.  Dearish, eh?"
+
+"Ah, Vance, if I had three pounds!"
+
+"Tush; and say no more till we have supped.  I have the hunger of a
+wolf."
+
+Just in sight of the next milestone the young travellers turned a few
+yards down a green lane, and reached a small inn on the banks of the
+Thames.  Here they had sojourned for the last few days, sketching,
+boating, roaming about the country from sunrise, and returning to supper
+and bed at nightfall.  It was the pleasantest little inn,--an arbour,
+covered with honeysuckle, between the porch and the river,--a couple of
+pleasure-boats moored to the bank; and now all the waves rippling under
+the moonlight.
+
+"Supper and lights in the arbour," cried Vance to the waiting-maid, "hey,
+presto, quick! while we turn in to wash our hands.  And hark! a quart jug
+of that capital whiskey-toddy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Being a chapter that links the past to the future by the gradual
+     elucidation of antecedents.
+
+O wayside inns and pedestrian rambles!  O summer nights, under
+honeysuckle arbours, on the banks of starry waves!  O Youth, Youth!
+
+Vance ladled out the toddy and lighted his cigar; then, leaning his head
+on his hand and his elbow on the table, he looked with an artist's eye
+along the glancing river.
+
+"After all," said he, "I am glad I am a painter; and I hope I may live to
+be a great one."
+
+"No doubt, if you live, you will be a great one," cried Lionel, with
+cordial sincerity.  "And if I, who can only just paint well enough to
+please myself, find that it gives a new charm to Nature--"
+
+"Cut sentiment," quoth Vance, "and go on."
+
+"What," continued Lionel, unchilled by the admonitory interruption, "must
+you feel who can fix a fading sunshine--a fleeting face--on a scrap of
+canvas, and say 'Sunshine and Beauty, live there forever!'"
+
+VANCE.--"Forever! no!  Colours perish, canvas rots.  What remains to us
+of Zeuxis?  Still it is prettily said on behalf of the poetic side of the
+profession; there is a prosaic one;--we'll blink it.  Yes; I am glad to
+be a painter.  But you must not catch the fever of my calling.  Your poor
+mother would never forgive me if she thought I had made you a dauber by
+my example."
+
+LIONEL (gloomily).--"No.  I shall not be a painter!  But what can I be?
+How shall I ever build on the earth one of the castles I have built in
+the air?  Fame looks so far,--Fortune so impossible.  But one thing I am
+bent upon" (speaking with knit brow and clenched teeth), "I will gain an
+independence somehow, and support my mother."
+
+VANCE.--"Your mother is supported: she has the pension--"
+
+LIONEL.--"Of a captain's widow; and" (he added with a flushed cheek) "a
+first floor that she lets to lodgers."
+
+VANCE.--"No shame in that!  Peers let houses; and on the Continent,
+princes let not only first floors, but fifth and sixth floors, to say
+nothing of attics and cellars.  In beginning the world, friend Lionel, if
+you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully,
+put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand
+occasions.  Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating
+sackcloth on the side next to the skin.  Even kings don't wear the
+dalmaticum except at a coronation.  Independence you desire; good.  But
+are you dependent now?  Your mother has given you an excellent education,
+and you have already put it to profit.  My dear boy," added Vance, with
+unusual warmth, "I honour you; at your age, on leaving school, to have
+shut yourself up, translated Greek and Latin per sheet for a bookseller,
+at less than a valet's wages, and all for the purpose of buying comforts
+for your mother; and having a few pounds in your own pockets, to rove
+your little holiday with me and pay your share of the costs!  Ah, there
+are energy and spirit and life in all that, Lionel, which will found upon
+rock some castle as fine as any you have built in air.  Your hand, my
+boy."
+
+This burst was so unlike the practical dryness, or even the more unctuous
+humour, of Frank Vance, that it took Lionel by surprise, and his voice
+faltered as he pressed the hand held out to him.  He answered, "I don't
+deserve your praise, Vance, and I fear the pride you tell me to put under
+lock and key has the larger share of the merit you ascribe to better
+motives.  Independent?  No!  I have never been so."
+
+VANCE.--"Well, you depend on a parent: who, at seventeen does not?"
+
+LIONEL.--"I did not mean my mother; of course, I could not be too proud
+to take benefits from her.  But the truth is simply this--, my father had
+a relation, not very near, indeed,--a cousin, at about as distant a
+remove, I fancy, as a cousin well can be.  To this gentleman my mother
+wrote when my poor father died; and he was generous, for it is he who
+paid for my schooling.  I did not know this till very lately.  I had a
+vague impression, indeed, that I had a powerful and wealthy kinsman who
+took an interest in me, but whom I had never seen."
+
+VANCE.--"Never seen?"
+
+LIONEL.--"No.  And here comes the sting.  On leaving school last
+Christmas, my mother, for the first time, told me the extent of my
+obligations to this benefactor, and informed me that he wished to know my
+own choice as to a profession,--that if I preferred Church or Bar, he
+would maintain me at college."
+
+VANCE.--"Body o' me!  where's the sting in that?  Help yourself to toddy,
+my boy, and take more genial views of life."
+
+LIONEL.--"You have not heard me out.  I then asked to see my benefactor's
+letters; and my mother, unconscious of the pain she was about to inflict,
+showed me not only the last one, but all she had received from him.  Oh,
+Vance, they were terrible, those letters!  The first began by a dry
+acquiescence in the claims of kindred, a curt proposal to pay my
+schooling; but not one word of kindness, and a stern proviso that the
+writer was never to see nor hear from me.  He wanted no gratitude; he
+disbelieved in all professions of it.  His favours would cease if I
+molested him.  'Molested' was the word; it was bread thrown to a dog."
+
+VANCE.--"Tut!  Only a rich man's eccentricity.  A bachelor, I presume?"
+
+LIONEL.--"My mother says he has been married, and is a widower."
+
+VANCE.--"Any children?"
+
+LIONEL.--"My mother says none living; but I know little or nothing about
+his family."
+
+Vance looked with keen scrutiny into the face of his boyfriend, and,
+after a pause, said, drily,--"Plain as a pikestaff.  Your relation is one
+of those men who, having no children, suspect and dread the attention of
+an heir presumptive; and what has made this sting, as you call it, keener
+to you is--pardon me--is in some silly words of your mother, who, in
+showing you the letters, has hinted to you that that heir you might be,
+if you were sufficiently pliant and subservient.  Am I not right?"
+
+Lionel hung his head, without reply.
+
+VANCE (cheeringly).--"So, so; no great harm as yet.  Enough of the first
+letter.  What was the last?"
+
+LIONEL.--"Still more offensive.  He, this kinsman, this patron, desired
+my mother to spare him those references to her son's ability and promise,
+which, though natural to herself, had slight interest to him,--him, the
+condescending benefactor!  As to his opinion, what could I care for the
+opinion of one I had never seen?  All that could sensibly affect my--oh,
+but I cannot go on with those cutting phrases, which imply but this, 'All
+I can care for is the money of a man who insults me while he gives it.'"
+
+VANCE (emphatically).--"Without being a wizard, I should say your
+relative was rather a disagreeable person,--not what is called urbane and
+amiable,--in fact, a brute."
+
+LIONEL.--"You will not blame me, then, when I tell you that I resolved
+not to accept the offer to maintain me at college, with which the letter
+closed.  Luckily Dr. Wallis (the head master of my school), who had
+always been very kind to me, had just undertaken to supervise a popular
+translation of the classics.  He recommended me, at my request, to the
+publisher engaged in the undertaking, as not incapable of translating
+some of the less difficult Latin authors,--subject to his corrections.
+When I had finished the first instalment of the work thus intrusted to
+me, my mother grew alarmed for my health, and insisted on my taking some
+recreation.  You were about to set out on a pedestrian tour.  I had, as
+you say, some pounds in my pocket; and thus I have passed with you the
+merriest days of my life."
+
+VANCE.--"What said your civil cousin when your refusal to go to college
+was conveyed to him?"
+
+LIONEL.--"He did not answer my mother's communication to that effect till
+just before I left home, and then,--no, it was not his last letter from
+which I repeated that withering extract,--no, the last was more galling
+still, for in it he said that if, in spite of the ability and promise
+that had been so vaunted, the dulness of a college and the labour of
+learned professions were so distasteful to me, he had no desire to
+dictate to my choice, but that as he did not wish one who was, however
+remotely, of his blood, and bore the name of Haughton, to turn shoeblack
+or pickpocket--Vance--Vance!"
+
+VANCE.--"Lock up your pride--the sackcloth frets you--and go on; and that
+therefore he--"
+
+LIONEL.--"Would buy me a commission in the army, or get me an appointment
+in India."
+
+VANCE.--"Which did you take?"
+
+LIONEL (passionately). "Which! so offered,--which?--of course neither!
+But distrusting the tone of my mother's reply, I sat down, the evening
+before I left home, and wrote myself to this cruel man.  I did not show
+any letter to my mother,--did not tell her of it.  I wrote shortly,--that
+if he would not accept my gratitude, I would not accept his benefits;
+that shoeblack I might be,--pickpocket, no! that he need not fear I
+should disgrace his blood or my name; and that I would not rest till,
+sooner or later, I had paid him back all that I had cost him, and felt
+relieved from the burdens of an obligation which--which--"  The boy
+paused, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed.
+
+Vance, though much moved, pretended to scold his friend, but finding that
+ineffectual, fairly rose, wound his arm brother-like round him, and drew
+him from the arbour to the shelving margin of the river.  "Comfort," then
+said the Artist, almost solemnly, as here, from the inner depths of his
+character, the true genius of the man came forth and spoke,--"comfort,
+and look round; see where the islet interrupts the tide, and how
+smilingly the stream flows on.  See, just where we stand, how the slight
+pebbles are fretting the wave would the wave if not fretted make that
+pleasant music?  A few miles farther on, and the river is spanned by a
+bridge, which busy feet now are crossing: by the side of that bridge now
+is rising a palace; all the men who rule England have room in that
+palace.  At the rear of the palace soars up the old Abbey where kings
+have their tombs in right of the names they inherit; men, lowly as we,
+have found tombs there, in right of the names which they made.  Think,
+now, that you stand on that bridge with a boy's lofty hope, with a man's
+steadfast courage; then turn again to that stream, calm with starlight,
+flowing on towards the bridge,--spite of islet and pebbles."
+
+Lionel made no audible answer, though his lips murmured, but he pressed
+closer and closer to his friend's side; and the tears were already dried
+on his cheek, though their dew still glistened in his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Speculations on the moral qualities of the Bandit.--Mr. Vance, with
+     mingled emotions, foresees that the acquisition of the Bandit's
+     acquaintance may be attended with pecuniary loss.
+
+Vance loosened the boat from its moorings, stepped in, and took up the
+oars.  Lionel followed, and sat by the stern.  The Artist rowed on
+slowly, whistling melodiously in time to the dash of the oars.  They soon
+came to the bank of garden-ground surrounding with turf on which fairies
+might have danced one of those villas never seen out of England.  From
+the windows of the villa the lights gleamed steadily; over the banks,
+dipping into the water, hung large willows breathlessly; the boat gently
+brushed aside their pendent boughs, and Vance rested in a grassy cove.
+
+"And faith," said the Artist, gayly,--"faith," said he, lighting his
+third cigar, "it is time we should bestow a few words more on the
+Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child!  What a cock-and-a-bull story
+the Cobbler told us!  He must have thought us precious green."
+
+LIONEL (roused).--"Nay, I see nothing so wonderful in the story, though
+much that is sad.  You must allow that Waife may have been a good actor:
+you became quite excited merely at his attitude and bow.  Natural,
+therefore, that he should have been invited to try his chance on the
+London stage; not improbable that he may have met with an accident by the
+train, and so lost his chance forever; natural, then, that he should
+press into service his poor little grandchild, natural, also, that,
+hardly treated and his pride hurt, he should wish to escape."
+
+VANCE.--"And more natural than all that he should want to extract from
+our pockets three pounds, the Bandit!  No, Lionel, I tell you what is not
+probable, that he should have disposed of that clever child to a vagabond
+like Rugge: she plays admirably.  The manager who was to have engaged him
+would have engaged her if he had seen her.  I am puzzled."
+
+LIONEL.--"True, she is an extraordinary child.  I cannot say how she has
+interested me."  He took out his purse, and began counting its contents.
+"I have nearly three pounds left," he cried joyously.  "L2. 18s. if I
+give up the thought of a longer excursion with you, and go quietly
+home--"
+
+VANCE.--"And not pay your share of the bill yonder?"
+
+LIONEL.--"Ah, I forgot that!  But come, I am not too proud to borrow
+from you: it is not for a selfish purpose."
+
+VANCE.--"Borrow from me, Cato!  That comes of falling in with bandits
+and their children.  No; but let us look at the thing like men of sense.
+One story is good till another is told.  I will call by myself on Rugge
+to-morrow, and hear what he says; and then, if we judge favourably of the
+Cobbler's version, we will go at night and talk with the Cobbler's
+lodgers; and I dare say," added Vance, kindly, but with a sigh,--"I
+daresay the three pounds will be coaxed out of me!  After all, her head
+is worth it.  I want an idea for Titania."
+
+LIONEL (joyously).--"My dear Vance, you are the best fellow in the
+world."
+
+VANCE.--"Small compliment to humankind!  Take the oars: it is your turn
+now."
+
+Lionel obeyed; the boat once more danced along the tide--thoro' reeds,--
+--thoro' waves, skirting the grassy islet--out into pale moonlight.  They
+talked but by fits and starts.  What of?--a thousand things!  Bright
+young hearts, eloquent young tongues!  No sins in the past; hopes
+gleaming through the future.  O summer nights, on the glass of starry
+waves!  O Youth, Youth!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     Wherein the historian tracks the public characters that fret their
+     hour on the stage, into the bosom of private life.--The reader is
+     invited to arrive at a conclusion which may often, in periods of
+     perplexity, restore ease to his mind; namely, that if man will
+     reflect on all the hopes he has nourished, all the fears he has
+     admitted, all the projects he has formed, the wisest thing he can
+     do, nine times out of ten, with hope, fear, and project, is to let
+     them end with the chapter--in smoke.
+
+It was past nine o'clock in the evening of the following day.  The
+exhibition at Mr. Rugge's theatre had closed for the season in that
+village, for it was the conclusion of the fair.  The final performance
+had been begun and ended somewhat earlier than on former nights.  The
+theatre was to be cleared from the ground by daybreak, and the whole
+company to proceed onward betimes in the morning.  Another fair awaited
+them in an adjoining county, and they had a long journey before them.
+
+Gentleman Waife and his Juliet Araminta had gone to their lodgings over
+the Cobbler's stall.  Their rooms were homely enough, but had an air not
+only of the comfortable, but the picturesque.  The little sitting-room
+was very old-fashioned,--panelled in wood that had once been painted
+blue, with a quaint chimney-piece that reached to the ceiling.  That part
+of the house spoke of the time of Charles I., it might have been tenanted
+by a religious Roundhead; and, framed-in over the low door, there was a
+grim, faded portrait of a pinched-faced saturnine man, with long lank
+hair, starched band, and a length of upper lip that betokened relentless
+obstinacy of character, and might have curled in sullen glee at the
+monarch's scaffold, or preached an interminable sermon to the stout
+Protector.  On a table, under the deep-sunk window, were neatly arrayed
+a few sober-looking old books; you would find amongst them Colley's
+"Astrology," Owen Feltham's "Resolves," Glanville "On Witches," the
+"Pilgrim's Progress," an early edition of "Paradise Lost," and an old
+Bible; also two flower-pots of clay brightly reddened, and containing
+stocks; also two small worsted rugs, on one of which rested a carved
+cocoa-nut, on the other an egg-shaped ball of crystal,--that last the
+pride and joy of the cobbler's visionary soul.  A door left wide open
+communicated with an inner room (very low was its ceiling), in which the
+Bandit slept, if the severity of his persecutors permitted him to sleep.
+In the corner of the sitting-room, near that door, was a small horsehair
+sofa, which, by the aid of sheets and a needlework coverlid, did duty for
+a bed, and was consigned to the Bandit's child.  Here the tenderness of
+the Cobbler's heart was visible, for over the coverlid were strewed
+sprigs of lavender and leaves of vervain; the last, be it said, to induce
+happy dreams, and scare away witchcraft and evil spirits.  On another
+table, near the fireplace, the child was busied in setting out the tea-
+things for her grandfather.  She had left in the property-room of the
+theatre her robe of spangles and tinsel, and appeared now in a simple
+frock.  She had no longer the look of Titania, but that of a lively,
+active, affectionate human child; nothing theatrical about her now, yet
+still, in her graceful movements, so nimble but so noiseless, in her
+slight fair hands, in her transparent colouring, there was Nature's own
+lady,--that SOMETHING which strikes us all as well-born and high-bred:
+not that it necessarily is so; the semblances of aristocracy, in female
+childhood more especially, are often delusive.  The /souvenance/ flower,
+wrought into the collars of princes, springs up wild on field and fell.
+
+Gentleman Waife, wrapped negligently in a gray dressing-gown and seated
+in an old leathern easy-chair, was evidently out of sorts.  He did not
+seem to heed the little preparations for his comfort, but, resting his
+cheek on his right hand, his left drooped on his crossed knees,--an
+attitude rarely seen in a man when his heart is light and his spirits
+high.  His lips moved: he was talking to himself.  Though he had laid
+aside his theatrical bandage over both eyes, he wore a black patch over
+one, or rather where one had been; the eye exposed was of singular
+beauty, dark and brilliant.  For the rest, the man had a striking
+countenance, rugged, and rather ugly than otherwise, but by no means
+unprepossessing; full of lines and wrinkles and strong muscle, with large
+lips of wondrous pliancy, and an aspect of wistful sagacity, that, no
+doubt, on occasion could become exquisitely comic,--dry comedy,--the
+comedy that makes others roar when the comedian himself is as grave as a
+judge.
+
+You might see in his countenance, when quite in its natural repose, that
+Sorrow had passed by there; yet the instant the countenance broke into
+play, you would think that Sorrow must have been sent about her business
+as soon as the respect due to that visitor, so accustomed to have her own
+way, would permit.  Though the man was old, you could not call him
+aged.  One-eyed and crippled, still, marking the muscular arm, the
+expansive chest, you would have scarcely called him broken or infirm.
+And hence there was a certain indescribable pathos in his whole
+appearance, as if Fate had branded, on face and form, characters in which
+might be read her agencies on career and mind,--plucked an eye from
+intelligence, shortened one limb for life's progress, yet left whim
+sparkling out in the eye she had spared, and a light heart's wild spring
+in the limb she had maimed not.
+
+"Come, Grandy, come," said the little girl, coaxingly; "your tea will get
+quite cold; your toast is ready, and here is such a nice egg; Mr. Merle
+says you may be sure it is new laid.  Come, don't let that hateful man
+fret you: smile on your own Sophy; come."
+
+"If," said Mr. Waife, in a hollow undertone,  if I were alone in the
+world--"
+
+"Oh, Grandy!"
+
+             "'I know a spot on which a bed-post grows,
+               And do remember where a roper lives.'
+
+Delightful prospect, not to be indulged; for if I were in peace at one
+end of the rope, what would chance to my Sophy, left forlorn at the
+other?"
+
+"Don't talk so, or I shall think you are sorry to have taken care of me."
+
+"Care of thee, oh, child! and what care?  It is thou who takest care of
+me.  Put thy hands from thy mouth; sit down, darling, there, opposite,
+and let us talk.  Now, Sophy, thou hast often said that thou wouldst be
+glad to be out of this mode of life, even for one humbler and harder:
+think well, is it so?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed, grandfather."
+
+"No more tinsel dresses and flowery wreaths; no more applause; no more of
+the dear divine stage excitement; the heroine and fairy vanished; only a
+little commonplace child in dingy gingham, with a purblind cripple for
+thy sole charge and playmate; Juliet Araminta evaporated evermore into
+little Sophy!"
+
+"It would be so nice!"  answered little Sophy, laughing merrily.
+
+"What would make it nice?"  asked the Comedian, turning on her his
+solitary piercing eye, with curious interest in his gaze.
+
+Sophy left her seat, and placed herself on a stool at her grandfather's
+knee; on that knee she clasped her tiny hands, and shaking aside her
+curls, looked into his face with confident fondness.  Evidently these two
+were much more than grandfather and grandchild: they were friends, they
+were equals, they were in the habit of consulting and prattling with each
+other.  She got at his meaning, however covert his humour; and he to the
+core of her heart, through its careless babble.  Between you and me,
+Reader, I suspect that, in spite of the Comedian's sagacious wrinkles,
+the one was as much a child as the other.
+
+"Well," said Sophy, "I will tell you, Grandy, what would make it nice: no
+one would vex and affront you,--we should be all by ourselves; and then,
+instead of those nasty lamps and those dreadful painted creatures, we
+could go out and play in the fields and gather daisies; and I could run
+after butterflies, and when I am tired I should come here, where I am
+now, any time of the day, and you would tell me stories and pretty
+verses, and teach me to write a little better than I do now, and make
+such a wise little woman of me; and if I wore gingham--but it need not be
+dingy, Grandy--it would be all mine, and you would be all mine too, and
+we'd keep a bird, and you'd teach it to sing; and oh, would it not be
+nice!"
+
+"But still, Sophy, we should have to live, and we could not live upon
+daisies and butterflies.  And I can't work now; for the matter of that,
+I never could work: more shame for me, but so it is.  Merle says the
+fault is in the stars,--with all my heart.  But the stars will not go to
+the jail or the workhouse instead of me.  And though they want nothing to
+eat, we do."
+
+"But, Grandy, you have said every day since the first walk you took after
+coming here, that if you had three pounds, we could get away and live by
+ourselves and make a fortune!"
+
+"A fortune!--that's a strong word: let it stand.  A fortune!  But still,
+Sophy, though we should be free of this thrice-execrable Rugge, the
+scheme I have in my head lies remote from daisies and butterflies.  We
+should have to dwell in towns and exhibit!"
+
+"On a stage, Grandy?" said Sophy, resigned, but sorrowful.
+
+"No, not exactly: a room would do."
+
+"And I should not wear those horrid, horrid dresses, nor mix with those
+horrid, horrid painted people."
+
+"No."
+
+"And we should be quite alone, you and I?"
+
+"Hum! there would be a third."
+
+"Oh, Grandy, Grandy!"  cried Sophy, in a scream of shrill alarm.  "I
+know, I know; you are thinking of joining us with the Pig-faced Lady!"
+
+MR. WAIFE (not a muscle relaxed).--"A well-spoken and pleasing
+gentlewoman.  But no such luck: three pounds would not buy her."
+
+SOPHIE.--"I am glad of that: I don't care so much for the Mermaid; she's
+dead and stuffed.  But, oh!" (another scream) "perhaps 't is the Spotted
+Boy?"
+
+MR. WAIFE.--"Calm your sanguine imagination; you aspire too high!  But
+this I will tell you, that our companion, whatsoever or whosoever that
+companion may be, will be one you will like."
+
+"I don't believe it," said Sophy, shaking her head.  "I only like you.
+But who is it?"
+
+"Alas!" said Mr. Waife, "it is no use pampering ourselves with vain
+hopes: the three pounds are not forthcoming.  You heard what that brute
+Rugge said, that the gentleman who wanted to take your portrait had
+called on him this morning, and offered 10s. for a sitting,--that is, 5s.
+for you, 5s. for Rugge; and Rugge thought the terms reasonable."
+
+"But I said I would not sit."
+
+"And when you did say it, you heard Rugge's language to me--to you.
+And now you must think of packing up, and be off at dawn with the rest.
+And," added the comedian, colouring high, "I must again parade, to boors
+and clowns, this mangled form; again set myself out as a spectacle of
+bodily infirmity,--man's last degradation.  And this I have come to--I!"
+
+"No, no, Grandy, it will not last long! we will get the three pounds.
+We have always hoped on!--hope still!  And, besides, I am sure those
+gentlemen will come here tonight.  Mr. Merle said they would, at ten
+o'clock.  It is near ten now, and your tea cold as a stone."
+
+She hung on his neck caressingly, kissing his furrowed brow, and leaving
+a tear there, and thus coaxed him till he set-to quietly at his meal; and
+Sophy shared it--though she had no appetite in sorrowing for him--but to
+keep him company; that done, she lighted his pipe with the best canaster,
+--his sole luxury and expense; but she always contrived that he should
+afford it.
+
+Mr. Waife drew a long whiff, and took a more serene view of affairs.  He
+who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself
+the softest consolation, next to that which comes from Heaven.  "What,
+softer than woman?" whispers the young reader.  Young reader, woman
+teases as well as consoles.  Woman makes half the sorrows which she
+boasts the privilege to soothe.  Woman consoles us, it is true, while we
+are young and handsome!  when we are old and ugly, woman snubs and scolds
+us.  On the whole, then, woman in this scale, the weed in that, Jupiter,
+hang out thy balance, and weigh them both; and if thou give the
+preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee,
+--O Jupiter, try the weed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     The historian, in pursuance of his stern duties, reveals to the
+     scorn of future ages some of the occult practices which discredit
+     the march of light in the nineteenth century.
+
+"May I come in?"  asked the Cobbler, outside the door.  "Certainly come
+in," said Gentleman Waife.  Sophy looked wistfully at the aperture, and
+sighed to see that Merle was alone.  She crept up to him.
+
+"Will they not come?"  she whispered.  "I hope so, pretty one; it be n't
+ten yet."
+
+"Take a pipe, Merle," said Gentleman Waife, with a Grand Comedian air.
+
+"No, thank you kindly; I just looked in to ask if I could do anything for
+ye, in case--in case ye must go tomorrow."
+
+"Nothing: our luggage is small, and soon packed.  Sophy has the money to
+discharge the meaner part of our debt to you."
+
+"I don't value that," said the Cobbler, colouring.
+
+"But we value your esteem," said Mr. Waife, with a smile that would have
+become a field-marshal.  "And so, Merle, you think, if I am a broken-down
+vagrant, it must be put to the long account of the celestial bodies!"
+
+"Not a doubt of it," returned the Cobbler, solemnly.  "I wish you would
+give me date and place of Sophy's birth that's what I want; I'd take her
+horryscope.  I'm sure she'd be lucky."
+
+"I'd rather not, please," said Sophy, timidly.
+
+"Rather not?--very odd.  Why?"
+
+"I don't want to know the future."
+
+"That is odder and odder," quoth the Cobbler, staring; "I never heard a
+girl say that afore."
+
+"Wait till she's older, Mr. Merle," said Waife: "girls don't want to know
+the future till they want to be married."
+
+"Summat in that," said the Cobbler.  He took up the crystal.  "Have you
+looked into this ball, pretty one, as I bade ye?"
+
+"Yes, two or three times."
+
+"Ha!  and what did you see?"
+
+"My own face made very long," said Sophy,--"as long as that--,"
+stretching out her hands.
+
+The Cobbler shook his head dolefully, and screwing up one eye, applied
+the other to the mystic ball.
+
+MR. WAIFE.--"Perhaps you will see if those two gentlemen are coming."
+
+SOPHY.--"Do, do! and if they will give us three pounds!"
+
+COBBLER (triumphantly).--"Then you do care to know the future, after
+all?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Yes, so far as that goes; but don't look any further, pray."
+
+COBBLER (intent upon the ball, and speaking slowly, and in jerks).--"A
+mist now.  Ha! an arm with a besom--sweeps all before it."
+
+SOPHY (frightened).--"Send it away, please."
+
+COBBLER--"It is gone.  Ha! there's Rugge,--looks very angry,--savage,
+indeed."
+
+WAIFE.--"Good sign that! proceed."
+
+COBBLER.--"Shakes his fist; gone.  Ha! a young man, boyish, dark hair."
+
+SOPHY (clapping her hands).--"That is the young gentleman--the very young
+one, I mean--with the kind eyes; is he coming?--is he, is he?"
+
+WAIFE--"Examine his pockets! do you see there three pounds?"
+
+COBBLER (testily).--"Don't be a-interrupting.  Ha! he is talking with
+another gentleman, bearded."
+
+SOPHY (whispering to her grandfather).--"The old young gentleman."
+
+COBBLER (putting down the crystal, and with great decision).--"They are
+coming here; I see 'd them at the corner of the lane, by the public-
+house, two minutes' walk to this door."  He took out a great silver
+watch: "Look, Sophy, when the minute-hand gets there (or before, if they
+walk briskly), you will hear them knock."
+
+Sophy clasped her hands in mute suspense, half-credulous, half-doubting;
+then she went and opened the room-door, and stood on the landing-place to
+listen.  Merle approached the Comedian, and said in a low voice, "I wish
+for your sake she had the gift."
+
+WAIFE.--"The gift!--the three pounds!--so do I!"
+
+COBBLER.--"Pooh! worth a hundred times three pounds; the gift,--the
+spirituous gift."
+
+WAIFE.--"Spirituous! don't like the epithet,--smells of gin!"
+
+COBBLER.--"Spirituous gift to see in the crystal: if she had that, she
+might make your fortune."
+
+WAIFE (with a 'sudden change of countenance).--"Ah!  I never thought of
+that.  But if she has not the gift, I could teach it her,--eh?"
+
+COBBLER (indignantly).--"I did not think to hear this from you, Mr.
+Waife.  Teach her,--you! make her an impostor, and of the wickedest kind,
+inventing lies between earth and them as dwell in the seven spheres!
+Fie!  No, if she hasn't the gift natural, let her alone: what here is not
+heaven-sent is devil-taught."
+
+WAIFE (awed, but dubious).--"Then you really think you saw all that you
+described, in that glass egg?"
+
+COBBLER.--"Think!--am I a liar?  I spoke truth, and the proof is--
+there--!" Rat-tat went the knocker at the door.
+
+"The two minutes are just up," said the Cobbler; and Cornelius Agrippa
+could not have said it with more wizardly effect.
+
+"They are come, indeed," said Sophy, re-entering the room softly: "I hear
+their voices at the threshold."
+
+The Cobbler passed by in silence, descended the stairs, and conducted
+Vance and Lionel into the Comedian's chamber; there he left them, his
+brow overcast.  Gentleman Waife had displeased him sorely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     Showing the arts by which a man, however high in the air Nature may
+     have formed his nose, may be led by that nose, and in directions
+     perversely opposite to those which, in following his nose, he might
+     be supposed to take; and, therefore, that nations the most liberally
+     endowed with practical good sense, and in conceit thereof, carrying
+     their noses the most horizontally aloof, when they come into
+     conference with nations more skilled in diplomacy and more practised
+     in "stage-play," end by the surrender of the precise object which it
+     was intended they should surrender before they laid their noses
+     together.
+
+We all know that Demosthenes said, Everything in oratory was acting,--
+stage-play.  Is it in oratory alone that the saying holds good?  Apply it
+to all circumstances of fife, "stage-play, stage-play, stage-play!"--only
+/ars est celare artem/, conceal the art.  Gleesome in soul to behold his
+visitors, calculating already on the three pounds to be extracted from
+them, seeing in that hope the crisis in his own checkered existence, Mr.
+Waife rose from his seat in superb /upocrisia/ or stage-play, and asked,
+with mild dignity,--"To what am I indebted, gentlemen, for the honour of
+your visit?"
+
+In spite of his, nose, even Vance was taken aback.  Pope says that Lord
+Bolingbroke had "the nobleman air."  A great comedian Lord Bolingbroke
+surely was.  But, ah, had Pope seen Gentleman Waife!  Taking advantage of
+the impression he had created, the actor added, with the finest
+imaginable breeding,--"But pray be seated;" and, once seeing them seated,
+resumed his easy-chair, and felt himself master of the situation.
+
+"Hum!" said Vance, recovering his self-possession, after a pause--"hum!"
+
+"Hem!" re-echoed Gentleman Waife; and the two men eyed each other much in
+the same way as Admiral Napier might have eyed the fort of Cronstadt, and
+the fort of Cronstadt have eyed Admiral Napier.
+
+Lionel struck in with that youthful boldness which plays the deuce with
+all dignified strategical science.
+
+"You must be aware why we come, sir; Mr. Merle will have explained.  My
+friend, a distinguished artist, wished to make a sketch, if you do not
+object, of this young lady's very"--
+
+"Pretty little face," quoth Vance, taking up the dis course.  "Mr. Rugge,
+this morning, was willing,--I understand that your grandchild refused.
+We are come here to see if she will be more complaisant under your own
+roof, or Under Mr. Merle's, which, I take it, is the same thing for the
+present."--Sophy had sidled up to Lionel.  He might not have been
+flattered if be knew why she preferred him to Vance.  She looked on him
+as a boy, a fellow-child; and an instinct, moreover, told her, that more
+easily through him than his shrewd-looking bearded guest could she attain
+the object of her cupidity,--"three pounds!"
+
+"Three pounds!" whispered Sophy, with the tones of an angel, into
+Lionel's thrilling ear.
+
+MR. WAIFE.--"Sir, I will be frank with you."  At that ominous
+commencement, Mr. Vance recoiled, and mechanically buttoned his trousers
+pocket.  Mr. Waife noted the gesture with his one eye, and proceeded
+cautiously, feeling his way, as it were, towards the interior of the
+recess thus protected.  "My grandchild declined your flattering proposal
+with my full approbation.  She did not consider--neither did I--that the
+managerial rights of Mr. Rugge entitled him to the moiety of her face--
+off the stage."  The Comedian paused, and with a voice, the mimic
+drollery of which no hoarseness could altogether mar, chanted the old
+line,--
+
+               "'My face is my fortune, sir,' she said."
+
+Vance smiled; Lionel laughed; Sophy nestled still nearer to the boy.
+
+GENTLEMAN WAIFE (with pathos and dignity).--"You see before you an old
+man: one way of life is the same to me as another.  But she,--do you
+think Mr. Rugge's stage the right place for her?"
+
+VANCE.--"Certainly not.  Why did you not introduce her to the London
+Manager who would have engaged yourself?"
+
+Waife could not conceal a slight change of countenance.  "How do I know
+she would have succeeded?  She had never then trod the boards.  Besides,
+what strikes you as so good in a village show may be poor enough in a
+metropolitan theatre.  Gentlemen, I do my best for her; you cannot think
+otherwise, since she maintains me!  I am no OEdipus, yet she is my
+Antigone."
+
+VANCE.--"You know the classics, sir.  Mr. Merle said you were a scholar!
+--read Sophocles in his native Greek, I presume, sir?"
+
+MR. WAIFE.--"You jeer at the unfortunate: I am used to it."
+
+VANCE (confused).--"I did not mean to wound you: I beg pardon.  But your
+language and manner are not what--what one might expect to find in a--in
+a--Bandit persecuted by a remorseless Baron."
+
+MR. WAIFE.--"Sir, you say you are an artist.  Have you heard no tales of
+your professional brethren,--men of genius the highest, who won fame,
+which I never did, and failed of fortunes, as I have done?  Their own
+fault, perhaps,--improvidence, wild habits, ignorance of the way how to
+treat life and deal with their fellow-men; such fault may have been mine
+too.  I suffer for it: no matter; I ask none to save me.  You are a
+painter: you would place her features on your canvas; you would have her
+rank amongst your own creations.  She may become a part of your
+immortality.  Princes may gaze on the effigies of the innocent happy
+childhood, to which your colours lend imperishable glow.  They may ask
+who and what was this fair creature?  Will you answer, 'One whom I found
+in tinsel, and so left, sure that she would die in rags!'--Save her!"
+
+Lionel drew forth his purse, and poured its contents on the table.  Vance
+covered them with his broad hand, and swept them into his own pocket!  At
+that sinister action Waife felt his heart sink into his shoes; but his
+face was as calm as a Roman's, only he resumed his pipe with a prolonged
+and testy whiff.
+
+"It is I who am to take the portrait, and it is I who will pay for it,"
+said Vance.  "I understand that you have a pressing occasion for"--
+
+"Three pounds!"  muttered Sophy, sturdily, through the tears which her
+grandfather's pathos had drawn forth from her downcast eyes, "Three
+pounds--three--three."
+
+"You shall have them.  But listen: I meant only to take a sketch; I must
+now have a finished portrait.  I cannot take this by candlelight.  You
+must let me come here to-morrow; and yet to-morrow, I understand, you
+meant to leave?"
+
+WAIFE.--"If you will generously bestow on us the sum you say, we shall
+not leave the village till you have completed your picture.  It is Mr.
+Rugge and his company we will leave."
+
+VANCE.--"And may I venture to ask what you propose to do, towards a new
+livelihood for yourself and your grandchild, by the help of a sum which
+is certainly much for me to pay,--enormous, I might say, /quoad/ me,--but
+small for a capital whereon to set up a business?"
+
+WAIFE.--"Excuse me if I do not answer that very natural question at
+present.  Let me assure you that that precise sum is wanted for an
+investment which promises her and myself an easy existence.  But to
+insure my scheme, I must keep it secret.  Do you believe me?"
+
+"I do!" cried Lionel; and Sophy, whom by this time he had drawn upon his
+lap, put her arm gratefully round his neck.
+
+"There is your money, sir, beforehand," said Vance, declining downward
+his betrayed and resentful nose, and depositing three sovereigns on the
+table.
+
+"And how do you know," said Waife, smiling, "that I may not be off
+to-night with your money and your model!"
+
+"Well," said Vance, curtly, "I think it is on the cards.  Still, as John
+Kemble said when rebuked for too large an alms,
+
+             "'It is not often that I do these things,
+               But when I do, I do them handsomely.'"
+
+"Well applied, and well delivered, sir," said the Comedian, "only you
+should put a little more emphasis on the word do."
+
+"Did I not put enough?  I am sure I felt it strongly; no one can feel the
+do more!"
+
+Waife's pliant face relaxed into a genial brightness.  The /equivoque/
+charmed him.  However, not affecting to comprehend it, he thrust back the
+money, and said,--"No, sir, not a shilling till the picture is completed.
+Nay, to relieve your mind, I will own that, had I no scruple more
+delicate, I would rather receive nothing till Mr. Rugge is gone.  True,
+he has no right to any share in it.  But you see before you a man who,
+when it comes to arguing, could never take a wrangler's degree,--never
+get over the Asses' Bridge, sir.  Plucked at it scores of times clean as
+a feather.  But do not go yet.  You came to give us money: give us what,
+were I rich, I should value more highly,--a little of your time.  You,
+sir, are an artist; and you, young gentleman?"  addressing Lionel.
+
+LIONEL (colouring).--"I--am nothing as yet."
+
+WAIFE.--"You are fond of the drama, I presume, both of you?  Apropos of
+John Kemble, you, sir, said that you have never heard him.  Allow me, so
+far as this cracked voice can do it, to give you a faint idea of him."
+
+"I shall be delighted," said Vance, drawing nearer to the table, and
+feeling more at his ease.  "But since I see you smoke, may I take the
+liberty to light my cigar?"
+
+"Make yourself at home," said Gentleman Waife, with the good-humour of a
+fatherly host.  And, all the while, Lionel and Sophy were babbling
+together, she still upon his lap.
+
+Waife began his imitation of John Kemble.  Despite the cracked voice, it
+was admirable.  One imitation drew on another; then succeeded anecdotes
+of the Stage, of the Senate, of the Bar.  Waife had heard great orators,
+whom every one still admires for the speeches which nobody nowadays ever
+reads; he gave a lively idea of each.  And then came sayings of dry
+humour and odd scraps of worldly observation; and time flew on pleasantly
+till the clock struck twelve, and the young guests tore themselves away.
+
+"Merle, Merle!"  cried the Comedian, when they were gone.
+
+Merle appeared.
+
+"We don't go to-morrow.  When Rugge sends for us (as he will do at
+daybreak), say so.  You shall lodge us a few days longer, and then--and
+then--my little Sophy, kiss me, kiss me!  You are saved at least from
+those horrid painted creatures!"
+
+"Ah, ah!" growled Merle from below, "he has got the money!  Glad to hear
+it.  But," he added, as he glanced at sundry weird and astrological
+symbols with which he had been diverting himself, "that's not it.  The
+true horary question, is, WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     The historian shows that, notwithstanding the progressive spirit of
+     the times, a Briton is not permitted, without an effort, "to
+     progress" according to his own inclinations.
+
+Sophy could not sleep.  At first she was too happy.  Without being
+conscious of any degradation in her lot amongst the itinerant artists of
+Mr. Rugge's exhibition,--how could she, when her beloved and revered
+protector had been one of those artists for years?--yet instinctively she
+shrank from their contact.  Doubtless, while absorbed in some stirring
+part, she forgot companions, audience, all, and enjoyed what she
+performed,--necessarily enjoyed, for her acting was really excellent,
+and where no enjoyment there no excellence; but when the histrionic
+enthusiasm was not positively at work, she crept to her grandfather with
+something between loathing and terror of the "painted creatures" and her
+own borrowed tinsel.
+
+But, more than all, she felt acutely every indignity or affront offered
+to Gentleman Waife.  Heaven knows, these were not few; and to escape from
+such a life--to be with her grandfather alone, have him all to herself to
+tend and to pet, to listen to and to prattle with--seemed to her the
+consummation of human felicity.  Ah, but should she be all alone?  Just
+as she was lulling herself into a doze, that question seized and roused
+her.  And then it was not happiness that kept her waking: it was what is
+less rare in the female breast, curiosity.  Who was to be the mysterious
+third, to whose acquisition the three pounds were evidently to be
+devoted?  What new face had she purchased by the loan of her own?  Not
+the Pig-faced Lady nor the Spotted Boy.  Could it be the Norfolk Giant or
+the Calf with two Heads?  Horrible idea!  Monstrous phantasmagoria began
+to stalk before her eyes; and to charm them away, with great fervour she
+fell to saying her prayers,--an act of devotion which she had forgotten,
+in her excitement, to perform before resting her head on the pillow,--an
+omission, let us humbly hope, not noted down in very dark characters by
+the recording angel.
+
+That act over, her thoughts took a more comely aspect than had been worn
+by the preceding phantasies, reflected Lionel's kind looks and repeated
+his gentle words.  "Heaven bless him!" she said with emphasis, as a
+supplement to the habitual prayers; and then tears gathered to her
+grateful eyelids, for she was one of those beings whose tears come slow
+from sorrow, quick from affection.  And so the gray dawn found her still-
+wakeful, and she rose, bathed her cheeks in the cold fresh water, and
+drew them forth with a glow like Hebe's.  Dressing herself with the quiet
+activity which characterized all her movements, she then opened the
+casement and inhaled the air.  All was still in the narrow lane; the
+shops yet unclosed.  But on the still trees behind the shops the birds
+were beginning to stir and chirp.  Chanticleer, from some neighbouring
+yard, rang out his brisk rereillee.  Pleasant English summer dawn in the
+pleasant English country village.  She stretched her graceful neck far
+from the casement, trying to catch a glimpse of the blue river.  She had
+seen its majestic flow on the day they had arrived at the fair, and
+longed to gain its banks; then her servitude to the stage forbade her.
+Now she was to be free!  O joy!  Now she might have her careless hours of
+holiday; and, forgetful of Waife's warning that their vocation must be
+plied in towns, she let her fancy run riot amidst visions of green fields
+and laughing waters, and in fond delusion gathered the daisies and chased
+the butterflies.  Changeling transferred into that lowest world of Art
+from the cradle of civil Nature, her human child's heart yearned for the
+human childlike delights.  All children love the country, the flowers,
+the sward, the birds, the butterflies; or if some do not, despair, O
+Philanthropy, of their afterlives!
+
+She closed the window, smiling to herself, stole through the adjoining
+doorway, and saw that her grandfather was still asleep.  Then she busied
+herself in putting the little sitting-room to rights, reset the table for
+the morning meal, watered the stocks, and finally took up the crystal and
+looked into it with awe, wondering why the Cobbler could see so much, and
+she only the distorted reflection of her own face.  So interested,
+however, for once, did she become in the inspection of this mystic globe,
+that she did not notice the dawn pass into broad daylight, nor hear a
+voice at the door below,--nor, in short, take into cognition the external
+world, till a heavy tread shook the floor, and then, starting, she beheld
+the Remorseless Baron, with a face black enough to have darkened the
+crystal of Dr. Dee himself.
+
+"Ho, ho," said Mr. Rugge, in hissing accents which had often thrilled the
+threepenny gallery with anticipative horror.  "Rebellious, eh?--won't
+come?  Where's your grandfather, baggage?"
+
+Sophy let fall the crystal--a mercy it was not brokenand gazed vacantly
+on the Baron.
+
+"Your vile scamp of a grandfather?"
+
+SOPHY (with spirit).--"He is not vile.  You ought to be ashamed of
+yourself speaking so, Mr. Rugge!"
+
+Here simultaneously, Mr. Waife, hastily indued in his gray dressing-gown,
+presented himself at the aperture of the bedroom door, and the Cobbler on
+the threshold of the sitting-room.  The Comedian stood mute, trusting
+perhaps to the imposing effect of his attitude.  The Cobbler, yielding to
+the impulse of untheatric man, put his head doggedly on one side, and
+with both hands on his hips said,
+
+"Civil words to my lodgers, master, or out you go!"
+
+The Remorseless Baron glared vindictively, first at one and then at the
+other; at length he strode up to Waife, and said, with a withering grin,
+"I have something to say to you; shall I say it before your landlord?"
+
+The Comedian waved his hand to the Cobbler.
+
+"Leave us, my friend; I shall not require you.  Step this way, Mr.
+Rugge."  Rugge entered the bedroom, and Waife closed the door behind him.
+
+"Anan," quoth the Cobbler, scratching his head.  "I don't quite take your
+grandfather's giving in.  British ground here!  But your Ascendant cannot
+surely be in such malignant conjunction with that obstreperous tyrant as
+to bind you to him hand and foot.  Let's see what the crystal thinks of
+it.  'Take it up gently, and come downstairs with me."
+
+"Please, no; I'll stay near Grandfather," said Sophy, resolutely.  "He
+sha'n't be left helpless with that rude man."
+
+The Cobbler could not help smiling.  "Lord love you," said he; "you have
+a spirit of your own, and if you were my wife I should be afraid of you.
+But I won't stand here eavesdropping; mayhap your grandfather has secrets
+I'm not to hear: call me if I'm wanted."  He descended.  Sophy, with less
+noble disdain of eavesdropping, stood in the centre of the room, holding
+her breath to listen.  She heard no sound; she had half a mind to put her
+ear to the keyhole, but that seemed even to her a mean thing, if not
+absolutely required by the necessity of the case.  So there she still
+stood, her head bent down, her finger raised: oh, that Vance could have
+so painted her!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     Showing the causes why men and nations, when one man or nation
+     wishes to get for its own arbitrary purposes what the other man or
+     nation does not desire to part with, are apt to ignore the mild
+     precepts of Christianity, shock the sentiments and upset the
+     theories of Peace Societies.
+
+"Am I to understand," said Mr. Rugge, in a whisper, when Waife had drawn
+him to the farthest end of the inner room, with the bed-curtains between
+their position and the door, deadening the sound of their voices,--"am I
+to understand that, after my taking you and that child to my theatre out
+of charity, and at your own request, you are going to quit me without
+warning,--French leave; is that British conduct?"
+
+"Mr. Rugge," replied Waife, deprecatingly, "I have no engagement with you
+beyond an experimental trial.  We were free on both sides for three
+months,--you to dismiss us any day, we to leave you.  The experiment does
+not please its: we thank you and depart."
+
+RUGGE.--"That is not the truth.  I said I was free to dismiss you both,
+if the child did not suit.  You, poor helpless creature, could be of no
+use.  But I never heard you say you were to be free too.  Stands to
+reason not!  Put my engage ments at a Waife's mercy!  I, Lorenzo Rugge!
+--stuff!  But I am a just man, and a liberal man, and if you think you
+ought to have a higher salary, if this ungrateful proceeding is only, as
+I take it, a strike for wages, I will meet you.  Juliet Araminta does
+play better than I could have supposed; and I'll conclude an engagement
+on good terms, as we were to have done if the experiment answered, for
+three years."  Waife shook his head.  "You are very good, Mr. Rugge, but
+it is not a strike.  My little girl does not like the life at any price;
+and, since she supports me, I am bound to please her.  Besides," said the
+actor, with a stiffer manner, "you have broken faith with me.  It was
+fully understood that I was to appear no more on your stage; all my task
+was to advise with you in the performances, remodel the plays, help in
+the stage-management; and you took advantage of my penury, and, when I
+asked for a small advance, insisted on forcing these relics of what I was
+upon the public pity.  Enough: we part.  I bear no malice."
+
+RUGGE.--"Oh, don't you?  No more do I.  But I am a Briton, and I have the
+spirit of one.  You had better not make an enemy of me."
+
+WAIFE.--"I am above the necessity of making enemies.  I have an enemy
+ready made in myself."
+
+Rugge placed a strong bony hand upon the cripple's arm.  "I dare say you
+have!  A bad conscience, sir.  How would you like your past life looked
+into, and blabbed out?"
+
+GENTLEMAN WAIFE (mournfully).--"The last four years of it have been spent
+in your service, Mr. Rugge.  If their record had been blabbed out for my
+benefit, there would not have been a dry eye in the house."
+
+RUGGE. "I disdain your sneer.  When a scorpion nursed at my bosom sneers
+at me, I leave it to its own reflections.  But I don't speak of the years
+in which that scorpion has been enjoying a salary and smoking canaster at
+my expense.  I refer to an earlier dodge in its checkered existence.  Ha,
+sir, you wince!  I suspect I can find out something about you which
+would--"
+
+WAIFE (fiercely).--"Would what?"
+
+RUGGE.--"Oh, lower your tone, sir; no bullying me.  I suspect!  I have
+good reason for suspicion; and if you sneak off in this way, and cheat me
+out of my property in Juliet Araminta, I will leave no stone unturned to
+prove what I suspect: look to it, slight man!  Come, I don't wish to
+quarrel; make it up, and" (drawing out his pocket-book) "if you want cash
+down, and will have an engagement in black and white for three years for
+Juliet Araminta, you may squeeze a good sum out of me, and go yourself
+where you please: you'll never be troubled by me.  What I want is the
+girl."
+
+All the actor laid aside, Waife growled out, "And hang me; sir, if you
+shall have the girl!"
+
+At this moment Sophy opened the door wide, and entered boldly.  She had
+heard her grandfather's voice raised, though its hoarse tones did not
+allow her to distinguish his words.  She was alarmed for him.  She came
+in, his guardian fairy, to protect him from the oppressor of six feet
+high.  Rugge's arm was raised, not indeed to strike, but rather to
+declaim.  Sophy slid between him and her grandfather, and, clinging round
+the latter, flung out her own arm, the forefinger raised menacingly
+towards the Remorseless Baron.  How you would have clapped if you had
+seen her so at Covent Garden!  But I'll swear the child did not know she
+was acting.  Rugge did, and was struck with admiration and regretful rage
+at the idea of losing her.
+
+"Bravo!" said he, involuntarily.  "Come, come, Waife, look at her: she
+was born for the stage.  My heart swells with pride.  She is my property,
+morally speaking; make her so legally; and hark, in your ear, fifty
+pounds.  Take me in the humour,--Golconda opens,--fifty pounds!"
+
+"No," said the vagrant.
+
+"Well," said Rugge, sullenly; "let her speak for herself."
+
+"Speak, child.  You don't wish to return to Mr. Rugge,--and without me,
+too,--do you, Sophy?"
+
+"Without you, Grandy!  I'd rather die first."
+
+"You hear her; all is settled between us.  You have had our services up
+to last night; you have paid us up to last night; and so good morning to
+you, Mr. Rugge."
+
+"My dear child," said the manager, softening his voice as much as he
+could, "do consider.  You shall be so made of without that stupid old
+man.  You think me cross, but 't is he who irritates and puts me out of
+temper.  I 'm uncommon fond of children.  I had a babe of my own once,--
+upon my honour, I had,--and if it had not been for convulsions, caused by
+teething, I should be a father still.  Supply to me the place of that
+beloved babe.  You shall have such fine dresses; all new,--choose 'em
+yourself,--minced veal and raspberry tarts for dinner every Sunday.  In
+three years, under my care, you will become a great actress, and make
+your fortune, and marry a lord,--lords go out of their wits for great
+actresses,--whereas, with him, what will you do? drudge and rot and
+starve; and he can't live long, and then where will you be?  'T is a
+shame to hold her so, you idle old vagabond."
+
+"I don't hold her," said Waife, trying to push her away.  "There's
+something in what the man says.  Choose for yourself, Sophy."
+
+SOPHY (suppressing a sob).--"How can you have the heart to talk so,
+Grandy?  I tell you, Mr. Rugge, you are a bad man, and I hate you, and
+all about you; and I'll stay with Grandfather; and I don't care if I do
+starve: he sha'n't!"
+
+MR. RUGGE (clapping both hands on the crown of his hat, and striding to
+the door).--"William Waife, beware 't is done.  I'm your enemy.  As for
+you, too dear but abandoned infant, stay with him: you'll find out very
+soon who and what he is; your pride will have a fall, when--"
+
+Waife sprang forward, despite his lameness,--both his fists clenched, his
+one eye ablaze; his broad burly torso confronted and daunted the stormy
+manager.  Taller and younger though Rugge was, he cowered before the
+cripple he had so long taunted and humbled.  The words stood arrested
+on his tongue.  "Leave the room instantly!"  thundered the actor,
+in a voice no longer broken.  "Blacken my name before that child by one
+word, and I will dash the next down your throat."  Rugge rushed to the
+door, and keeping it ajar between Waife and himself, he then thrust in
+his head, hissing forth,
+
+"Fly, caitiff, fly!  my revenge shall track your secret and place you in
+my power.  Juliet Araminta shall yet be mine."  With these awful words
+the Remorseless Baron cleared the stairs in two bounds, and was out of
+the house.
+
+Waife smiled contemptuously.  But as the street-door clanged on the
+form of the angry manager, the colour faded from the old man's face.
+Exhausted by the excitement he had gone through, he sank on a chair,
+and, with one quick gasp as for breath, fainted away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+     Progress of the Fine Arts.--Biographical anecdotes.--Fluctuations in
+     the value of money.--Speculative tendencies of the time.
+
+Whatever the shock which the brutality of the Remorseless Baron inflicted
+on the nervous system of the persecuted but triumphant Bandit, it had
+certainly subsided by the time Vance and Lionel entered Waife's
+apartment; for they found grandfather and grandchild seated near the open
+window, at the corner of the table (on which they had made room for their
+operations by the removal of the carved cocoanut, the crystal egg, and
+the two flower-pots), eagerly engaged, with many a silvery laugh from the
+lips of Sophy, in the game of dominos.
+
+Mr. Waife had been devoting himself, for the last hour and more, to the
+instruction of Sophy in the mysteries of that intellectual amusement; and
+such pains did he take, and so impressive were his exhortations, that his
+happy pupil could not help thinking to herself that this was the new art
+upon which Waife depended for their future livelihood.  She sprang up,
+however, at the entrance of the visitors, her face beaming with grateful
+smiles; and, running to Lionel and taking him by the hand, while she
+courtesied with more respect to Vance, she exclaimed, "We are free!
+thanks to you, thanks to you both!  He is gone!  Mr. Rugge is gone!"
+
+"So I saw on passing the green; stage and all," said Vance, while Lionel
+kissed the child and pressed her to his side.  It is astonishing how
+paternal he felt,--how much she had crept into his heart.
+
+"Pray, sir," asked Sophy, timidly, glancing to Vance, "has the Norfolk
+Giant gone too?"
+
+VANCE.--"I fancy so--all the shows were either gone or going."
+
+SOPHY.--"The Calf with Two Heads?"
+
+VANCE.--"Do you regret it?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Oh, dear, no."
+
+Waife, who after a profound bow, and a cheery "Good day, gentlemen,"
+had hitherto remained silent, putting away the dominoes, now said,
+"I suppose, sir, you would like at once to begin your sketch?"
+
+VANCE.--"Yes; I have brought all my tools; see, even the canvas.  I wish
+it were larger, but it is all I have with me of that material: 't is
+already stretched;  just let me arrange the light."
+
+WAIFE.--"If you don't want me, gentlemen, I will take the air for half-
+an-hour or so.  In fact, I may now feel free to look after my
+investment."
+
+SOPHY (whispering Lionel).--"You are sure the Calf has gone as well as
+the Norfolk Giant?"
+
+Lionel wonderingly replied that he thought so; and Waife disappeared into
+his room, whence he soon emerged, having doffed his dressing-gown for a
+black coat, by no means threadbare, and well brushed.  Hat, stick, and
+gloves in hand, he really seemed respectable,--more than respectable,--
+Gentleman Waife every inch of him; and saying, "Look your best, Sophy,
+and sit still, if you can," nodded pleasantly to the three, and hobbled
+down the stairs.  Sophy--whom Vance had just settled into a chair, with
+her head bent partially down (three-quarters), as the artist had released
+
+               "The loose train of her amber-dropping hair,"
+
+and was contemplating aspect and position with a painter's meditative
+eye-started up, to his great discomposure, and rushed to the window.  She
+returned to her seat with her mind much relieved.  Waife was walking in
+an opposite direction to that which led towards the whilolm quarters of
+the Norfolk Giant and the Two-headed Calf.
+
+"Come, come," said Vance, impatiently, "you have broken an idea in half.
+I beg you will not stir till I have placed you; and then, if all else of
+you be still, you may exercise your tongue.  I give you leave to talk."
+
+SOPHY (penitentially).--"I am so sorry--I beg pardon.  Will that do,
+sir?"
+
+VANCE.--"Head a little more to the right,--so, Titania watching Bottom
+asleep.  Will you lie on the floor, Lionel, and do Bottom?"
+
+LIONEL (indignantly).--"Bottom!  Have I an ass's head?"
+
+VANCE.--"Immaterial!  I can easily imagine that you have one.  I want
+merely an outline of figure,--something sprawling and ungainly."
+
+LIONEL (sulkily).--"Much obliged to you; imagine that too."
+
+VANCE.--"Don't be so disobliging.  It is necessary that she should look
+fondly at something,--expression in the eye."  Lionel at once reclined
+himself incumbent in a position as little sprawling and ungainly as he
+could well contrive.
+
+VANCE.--"Fancy, Miss Sophy, that this young gentleman is very dear to
+you.  Have you got a brother?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Ah, no, sir."
+
+VANCE.--"Hum.  But you have, or have had, a doll?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Oh, yes; Grandfather gave me one."
+
+VANCE.--"And you were fond of that doll?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Very."
+
+VANCE.--"Fancy that young gentleman is your doll grown big, that it is
+asleep, and you are watching that no one hurts it; Mr. Rugge, for
+instance.  Throw your whole soul into that thought,--love for doll,
+apprehension of Rugge.  Lionel, keep still, and shut your eyes; do."
+
+LIONEL (grumbling).--"I did not come here to be made a doll of."
+
+VANCE.--"Coax him to be quiet, Miss Sophy, and sleep peaceably, or I
+shall do him a mischief.  I can be a Rugge, too, if I am put out."
+
+SOPHY (in the softest tones).--"Do try and sleep, sir: shall I get you a
+pillow?"
+
+LIONEL.--"No, thank you: I'm very comfortable now," settling his head
+upon his arm; and after one upward glance towards Sophy, the lids closed
+reluctantly over his softened eyes.  A ray of sunshine came aslant
+through the half-shut window, and played along the boy's clustering hair
+and smooth pale cheek.  Sophy's gaze rested on him most benignly.
+
+"Just so," said Vance; "and now be silent till I have got the attitude
+and fixed the look."
+
+The artist sketched away rapidly with a bold practised hand, and all was
+silent for about half-an-hour, when he said, "You May get up, Lionel; I
+have done with you for the present."
+
+SOPHY.--"And me too--may I see?"
+
+VANCE.--"No, but you may talk now.  So you had a doll?  What has become
+of it?"
+
+SOPHY.--"I left it behind, sir.  Grandfather thought it would distract me
+from attending to his lessons and learning my part."
+
+VANCE.--"You love your grandfather more than the doll?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Oh! a thousand million million times more."
+
+VANCE.--"He brought you up, I suppose?  Have you no father,--no mother?"
+
+SOPHY.--"I have only Grandfather."
+
+LIONEL.--"Have you always lived with him?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Dear me, no; I was with Mrs. Crane till Grandfather came from
+abroad, and took me away, and put me with some very kind people; and
+then, when Grandfather had that bad accident, I came to stay with him,
+and we have been together ever since."
+
+LIONEL.--"Was Mrs. Crane no relation of yours?"
+
+SOPHY.--"No, I suppose not, for she was not kind; I was so miserable: but
+don't talk of it; I forget that now.  I only wish to remember from the
+time Grandfather took me in his lap, and told me to be a good child and
+love him; and I have been happy ever since."
+
+"You are a dear good child," said Lionel, emphatically, "and I wish I had
+you for my sister."
+
+VANCE.--"When your grandfather has received from me that exorbitant--not
+that I grudge it--sum, I should like to ask, What will he do with it?  As
+he said it was a secret, I must not pump you."
+
+SOPHY.--"What will he do with it?  I should like to know, too, sir; but
+whatever it is I don't care, so long as I and Grandfather are together."
+
+Here Waife re-entered.  "Well, how goes on the picture?"
+
+VANCE.--"Tolerably, for the first sitting; I require two more."
+
+WAIFE.--"Certainly; only--only" (he drew aside Vance, and whispered),
+"only the day after to-morrow, I fear I shall want the money.  It is an
+occasion that never will occur again: I would seize it."
+
+VANCE.--"Take the money now."
+
+WAIFE.--"Well, thank you, sir; you are sure now that we shall not run
+away; and I accept your kindness; it will make all safe."
+
+Vance, with surprising alacrity, slipped the sovereigns into the old
+man's hand; for truth to say, though thrifty, the artist was really
+generous.  His organ of caution was large, but that of acquisitiveness
+moderate.  Moreover, in those moments when his soul expanded with his
+art, he was insensibly less alive to the value of money.  And strange it
+is that, though States strive to fix for that commodity the most abiding
+standards, yet the value of money to the individual who regards it shifts
+and fluctuates, goes up and down half-a-dozen times a day.  For any part,
+I honestly declare that there are hours in the twenty-four--such, for
+instance, as that just before breakfast, or that succeeding a page of
+this History in which I have been put out of temper with my performance
+and myself--when any one in want of five shillings at my disposal would
+find my value of that sum put it quite out of his reach; while at other
+times--just after dinner, for instance, or when I have effected what
+seems to me a happy stroke, or a good bit of colour, in this historical
+composition--the value of those five shillings is so much depreciated
+that I might be,--I think so, at least,--I might be almost tempted to
+give them away for nothing.  Under some such mysterious influences in the
+money-market, Vance therefore felt not the loss of his three sovereigns;
+and returning to his easel, drove away Lionel and Sophy, who had taken
+that opportunity to gaze on the canvas.
+
+"Don't do her justice at all," quoth Lionel; "all the features
+exaggerated."
+
+"And you pretend to paint!" returned Vance, in great scorn, and throwing
+a cloth over his canvas.  "To-morrow, Mr. Waife, the same hour.  Now,
+Lionel, get your hat, and come away."
+
+Vance carried off the canvas, and Lionel followed slowly.  Sophy gazed at
+their departing forms from the open window; Waife stumped about the room,
+rubbing his hands, "He'll do; he 'll do: I always thought so."  Sophy
+turned: "Who'll do?--the young gentleman?  Do what?"
+
+WAIFE.-"The young gentleman?-as if I was thinking of him!  Our new
+companion; I have been with him this last hour.  Wonderful natural
+gifts."
+
+SOPHY (ruefully).--"It is alive, then?"
+
+WAIFE.--"Alive! yes, I should think so."
+
+SOPHY (half-crying.)--"I am very sorry; I know I shall hate it."
+
+WAIFF.--"Tut, darling: get me my pipe; I'm happy."
+
+SOPHY (cutting short her fit of ill-humour).--"Are you?  then I am, and I
+will not hate it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+     In which it is shown that a man does this or declines to do that for
+     reasons best known to himself,--a reserve which is extremely
+     conducive to the social interests of a community, since the
+     conjecture into the origin and nature of those reasons stimulates
+     the inquiring faculties, and furnishes the staple of modern
+     conversation.  And as it is not to be denied that, if their
+     neighbours left them nothing to guess at, three-fourths of civilized
+     humankind, male or female, would have nothing to talk about; so we
+     cannot too gratefully encourage that needful curiosity termed by the
+     inconsiderate tittle-tattle or scandal, which saves the vast
+     majority of our species from being reduced to the degraded condition
+     of dumb animals.
+
+The next day the sitting was renewed: but Waife did not go out, and the
+conversation was a little more restrained; or rather, Waife had the
+larger share in it.  The Comedian, when he pleased, could certainly be
+very entertaining.  It was not so much in what he said as his manner of
+saying it.  He was a strange combination of sudden extremes, at one while
+on a tone of easy but not undignified familiarity with his visitors, as
+if their equal in position, their superior in years; then abruptly,
+humble, deprecating, almost obsequious, almost servile; and then again,
+jerked as it were into pride and stiffness, falling back, as if the
+effort were impossible, into meek dejection.  Still the prevalent
+character of the man's mood and talk was social, quaint, cheerful.
+Evidently he was by original temperament a droll and joyous humourist,
+with high animal spirits; and, withal, an infantine simplicity at times,
+like the clever man who never learns the world and is always taken in.
+
+A circumstance, trifling in itself, but suggestive of speculation either
+as to the character or antecedent circumstances of Gentleman Waife, did
+not escape Vance's observation.  Since his rupture with Mr. Rugge, there
+was a considerable amelioration in that affection of the trachea, which,
+while his engagement with Rugge lasted, had rendered the Comedian's
+dramatic talents unavailable on the stage.  He now expressed himself
+without the pathetic hoarseness or cavernous wheeze which had previously
+thrown a wet blanket over his efforts at discourse.  But Vance put no
+very stern construction on the dissimulation which his change seemed to
+denote.  Since Waife was still one-eyed and a cripple, he might very
+excusably shrink from reappearance on the stage, and affect a third
+infirmity to save his pride from the exhibition of the two infirmities
+that were genuine.
+
+That which most puzzled Vance was that which had most puzzled the
+Cobbler,--What could the man once have been? how fallen so low?--for fall
+it was, that was clear.  The painter, though not himself of patrician
+extraction, had been much in the best society.  He had been a petted
+favourite in great houses.  He had travelled.  He had seen the world.
+He had the habits and instincts of good society.
+
+Now, in what the French term the /beau monde/, there are little traits
+that reveal those who have entered it,--certain tricks of phrase, certain
+modes of expression,--even the pronunciation of familiar words, even the
+modulation of an accent.  A man of the most refined bearing may not have
+these peculiarities; a man, otherwise coarse and brusque in his manner,
+may.  The slang of the /beau monde/ is quite apart from the code of high
+breeding.  Now and then, something in Waife's talk seemed to show that he
+had lighted on that beau-world; now and then, that something wholly
+vanished.  So that Vance might have said, "He has been admitted there,
+not inhabited it."
+
+Yet Vance could not feel sure, after all; comedians are such takes in.
+But was the man, by the profession of his earlier life, a comedian?
+Vance asked the question adroitly.
+
+"You must have taken to the stage young?"  said he.
+
+"The stage!" said Waife; "if you mean the public stage, no.  I have acted
+pretty often in youth, even in childhood, to amuse others, never
+professionally to support myself, till Mr. Rugge civilly engaged me four
+years ago."
+
+"Is it possible,--with your excellent education!  But pardon me; I have
+hinted my surprise at your late vocation before, and it displeased you."
+
+"Displeased me!" said Waife, with an abject, depressed manner; "I hope
+I said nothing that would have misbecome a poor broken vagabond like me.
+I am no prince in disguise,--a good-for-nothing varlet who should be too
+grateful to have something to keep himself from a dunghill."
+
+LIONEL.--"Don't talk so.  And but for your accident you might now be the
+great attraction on the metropolitan stage.  Who does not respect a
+really fine actor?"
+
+WAIFE (gloomily).--"The metropolitan stage!  I was talked into it: I am
+glad even of the accident that saved me; say no more of that, no more of
+that.  But I have spoiled your sitting.  Sophy, you see, has left her
+chair."
+
+"I have done for to-day," said Vance; "to-morrow, and my task is ended."
+
+Lionel came up to Vance and whispered him; the painter, after a pause,
+nodded silently, and then said to Waife,
+
+"We are going to enjoy the fine weather on the Thames (after I have put
+away these things), and shall return to our inn--not far hence--to sup,
+at eight o'clock.  Supper is our principal meal; we rarely spoil our days
+by the ceremonial of a formal dinner.  Will you do us the favour to sup
+with us?  Our host has a wonderful whiskey, which when raw is Glenlivat,
+but refined into toddy is nectar.  Bring your pipe, and let us hear John
+Kemble again."
+
+Waife's face lighted up.  "You are most kind; nothing I should like so
+much.  But--" and the light fled, the face darkened--"but no; I cannot
+--you don't know--that is--I--I have made a vow to myself to decline all
+such temptations.  I humbly beg you'll excuse me."
+
+VANCE.--" Temptations! of what kind,--the whiskey toddy?"
+
+WAIFE (puffing away a sigh).--"Ah, yes; whiskey toddy, if you please.
+Perhaps I once loved a glass too well, and could not resist a glass too
+much now; and if I once broke the rule and became a tippler, what would
+happen to Juliet Araminta?  For her sake don't press me."
+
+"Oh, do go, Grandy; he never drinks,--never anything stronger than tea,
+I assure you, sir: it can't be that."
+
+"It is, silly child, and nothing else," said Waife, positively, drawing
+himself up,--"excuse me."
+
+Lionel began brushing his hat with his sleeve, and his face worked; at
+last he said, "Well, sir, then may I ask another favour?  Mr. Vance and I
+are going to-morrow, after the sitting, to see Hampton Court; we have
+kept that excursion to the last before leaving these parts.  Would you
+and little Sophy come with us in the boat?  We will have no whiskey
+toddy, and we will bring you both safe home."
+
+WAIFE.--"What--I! what--I!  You are very young, sir,--a gentleman born
+and bred, I'll swear; and you to be seen, perhaps by some of your friends
+or family, with an old vagrant like me, in the Queen's palace,--the
+public gardens!  I should be the vilest wretch if I took such advantage
+of your goodness.  'Pretty company,' they would say, 'you had got into.'
+With me! with me!  Don't be alarmed, Mr. Vance not to be thought of."
+
+The young men were deeply affected.
+
+"I can't accept that reason," said Lionel, tremulously, "though I must
+not presume to derange your habits.  But she may go with us, mayn't she?
+We'll take care of her, and she is dressed so plainly and neatly, and
+looks such a little lady" (turning to Vance).
+
+"Yes, let her come with us," said the artist, benevolently; though he by
+no means shared in Lionel's enthusiastic desire for her company.  He
+thought she would be greatly in their way.
+
+"Heaven bless you both!"  answered Waife; "and she wants a holiday; she
+shall have it."
+
+"I'd rather stay with you, Grandy: you'll be so lone."
+
+"No, I wish to be out all to-morrow,-the investment!  I shall not be
+alone; making friends with our future companion, Sophy."
+
+"And can do without me already?  heigh-ho!"
+
+VANCE.--"So that's settled; good-by to you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+     Inspiring effect of the Fine Arts: the vulgar are moved by their
+     exhibition into generous impulses and flights of fancy, checked by
+     the ungracious severities of their superiors, as exemplified in the
+     instance of Cobbler Merle and his servant of-all-work.
+
+The next day, perhaps with the idea of removing all scruple from Sophy's
+mind, Waife had already gone after his investment when the friends
+arrived.  Sophy at first was dull and dispirited, but by degrees she
+brightened up; and when, the sitting over and the picture done (save such
+final touches as Vance reserved for solitary study), she was permitted to
+gaze at her own effigy, she burst into exclamations of frank delight.
+"Am I like that! is it possible?  Oh, how beautiful!  Mr. Merle, Mr.
+Merle, Mr. Merle!"  and running out of the room before Vance could stop
+her, she returned with the Cobbler, followed, too, by a thin gaunt girl,
+whom he pompously called his housekeeper, but who in sober truth was
+servant-of-all-work.  Wife he had none: his horoscope, he said, having
+Saturn in square to the Seventh House, forbade him to venture upon
+matrimony.  All gathered round the picture; all admired, and with
+justice: it was a chef-d'oeuvre.  Vance in his maturest day never painted
+more charmingly.  The three pounds proved to be the best outlay of
+capital he had ever made.  Pleased with his work, he was pleased even
+with that unsophisticated applause.
+
+"You must have Mercury and Venus very strongly aspected," quoth the
+Cobbler; "and if you have the Dragon's Head in the Tenth House, you may
+count on being much talked of after you are dead."
+
+"After I am dead!--sinister omen!"  said Vance, discomposed.  "I have no
+faith in artists who count on being talked of after they are dead.  Never
+knew a dauber who did not!  But stand back: time flies; tie up your hair;
+put on your bonnet, Titania.  You have a shawl?--not tinsel, I hope!
+quieter the better.  You stay and see to her, Lionel."
+
+Said the gaunt servant-of-all-work to Mr. Merle, "I'd let the gentleman
+paint me, if he likes: shall I tell him, master?"
+
+"Go back to the bacon, foolish woman.  Why, he gave L3 for her likeness,
+'cause of her Benefics!  But you'd have to give him three years' wages
+afore he'd look you straight in the face, 'cause, you see, your Aspects
+are crooked.  And," added the Cobbler, philosophizing, "when the Malefics
+are dead agin a girl's mug, man is so constituted by natur' that he can't
+take to that mug unless it has a golden handle.  Don't fret, 't is not
+your fault: born under Scorpio,--coarse-limbed,--dull complexion; and the
+Head of the Dragon aspected of Infortunes in all your Angles."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+     The historian takes advantage of the summer hours vouchsafed to the
+     present life of Mr. Waife's grandchild, in order to throw a few
+     gleams of light on her past.--He leads her into the palace of our
+     kings, and moralizes thereon; and, entering the Royal Gardens, shows
+     the uncertainty of human events, and the insecurity of British laws,
+     by the abrupt seizure and constrained deportation of an innocent and
+     unforeboding Englishman.
+
+Such a glorious afternoon!  The capricious English summer was so kind
+that day to the child and her new friends!  When Sophy's small foot once
+trod the sward, had she been really Queen of the Green People, sward and
+footstep could not more joyously have met together.  The grasshopper
+bounded in fearless trust upon the hem of her frock; she threw herself
+down on the grass and caught him, but, oh, so tenderly! and the gay
+insect, dear to poet and fairy, seemed to look at her from that quaint
+sharp face of his with sagacious recognition, resting calmly on the palm
+of her pretty hand; then when he sprang off, little moth-like butterflies
+peculiar to the margins of running waters quivered up from the herbage,
+fluttering round her.  And there, in front, lay the Thames, glittering
+through the willows, Vance getting ready the boat, Lionel seated by her
+side, a child like herself, his pride of incipient manhood all forgotten;
+happy in her glee; she loving him for the joy she felt, and blending his
+image evermore in her remembrance with her first summer holiday,--with
+sunny beams, glistening leaves, warbling birds, fairy wings, sparkling
+waves.  Oh, to live so in a child's heart,--innocent, blessed, angel-
+like,--better, better than the troubled reflection upon woman's later
+thoughts, better than that mournful illusion, over which tears so bitter
+are daily shed,--better than First Love!  They entered the boat.  Sophy
+had never, to the best of her recollection, been in a boat before.  All
+was new to her: the lifelike speed of the little vessel; that world of
+cool green weeds, with the fish darting to and fro; the musical chime of
+oars; those distant stately swans.  She was silent now--her heart was
+very full.
+
+"What are you thinking of, Sophy?"  asked Lionel, resting on the oar.
+
+"Thinking!--I was not thinking."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"I don't know,--feeling, I suppose."
+
+"Feeling what?"
+
+"As if between sleeping and waking; as the water perhaps feels, with the
+sunlight on it!"
+
+"Poetical," said Vance, who, somewhat of a poet himself, naturally
+sneered at poetical tendencies in others; "but not so bad in its way.
+Ah, have I hurt your vanity? there are tears in your eyes."
+
+"No, sir," said Sophy, falteringly.  "But I was thinking then."
+
+"Ah," said the artist, "that's the worst of it; after feeling ever comes
+thought; what was yours?"
+
+"I was sorry poor Grandfather was not here, that's all."
+
+"It was not our fault: we pressed him cordially," said Lionel.
+
+"You did indeed, sir, thank you!  And I don't know why he refused you."
+The young men exchanged compassionate glances.
+
+Lionel then sought to make her talk of her past life, tell him more of
+Mrs. Crane.  Who and what was she?
+
+Sophy could not or would not tell.  The remembrances were painful; she
+had evidently tried to forget them.  And the people with whom Waife had
+placed her, and who had been kind?
+
+The Misses Burton; and they kept a day-school, and taught Sophy to read,
+write, and cipher.  They lived near London, in a lane opening on a great
+common, with a green rail before the house, and had a good many pupils,
+and kept a tortoise shell cat and a canary.  Not much to enlighten her
+listener did Sophy impart here.
+
+And now they neared that stately palace, rich in associations of storm
+and splendour,--of the grand Cardinal; the iron-clad Protector; Dutch
+William of the immortal memory, whom we tried so hard to like, and in
+spite of the great Whig historian, that Titian of English prose, can only
+frigidly respect.  Hard task for us Britons to like a Dutchman who
+dethrones his father-in-law, and drinks schnaps!  Prejudice certainly;
+but so it is.  Harder still to like Dutch William's unfilial Fran!  Like
+Queen Mary!  I could as soon like Queen Goneril!  Romance flies from the
+prosperous phlegmatic AEneas; flies from his plump Lavinia, his "fidus
+Achates," Bentinck; flies to follow the poor deserted fugitive Stuart,
+with all his sins upon his head.  Kings have no rights divine, except
+when deposed and fallen; they are then invested with the awe that belongs
+to each solemn image of mortal vicissitude,--vicissitude that startles
+the Epicurean, "insanientis sapientiae consultus," and strikes from his
+careless lyre the notes that attest a god!  Some proud shadow chases
+another from the throne of Cyrus, and Horace hears in the thunder the
+rush of Diespiter, and identifies Providence with the Fortune that
+snatches off the diadem in her whirring swoop.  But fronts discrowned
+take a new majesty to generous natures: in all sleek prosperity there is
+something commonplace; in all grand adversity, something royal.
+
+The boat shot to the shore; the young people landed, and entered the arch
+of the desolate palace.  They gazed on the great hall and the presence-
+chamber, and the long suite of rooms with faded portraits; Vance as an
+artist, Lionel as an enthusiastic, well-read boy, Sophy as a wondering,
+bewildered, ignorant child.  And then they emerged into the noble garden,
+with its regal trees.  Groups were there of well dressed persons.  Vance
+heard himself called by name.  He had forgotten the London world,--
+forgotten, amidst his midsummer ramblings, that the London season was
+still ablaze; and there, stragglers from the great focus, fine people,
+with languid tones and artificial jaded smiles, caught him in his
+wanderer's dress, and walking side by side with the infant wonder of Mr.
+Rugge's show, exquisitely neat indeed, but still in a coloured print, of
+a pattern familiar to his observant eye in the windows of many a shop
+lavish of tickets, and inviting you to come in by the assurance that it
+is "selling off."  The artist stopped, coloured, bowed, answered the
+listless questions put to him with shy haste: he then attempted to
+escape; they would not let him.
+
+"You MUST come back and dine with us at the Star and Garter," said Lady
+Selina Vipont.  "A pleasant party,--you know most of them,--the Dudley
+Slowes, dear old Lady Frost, those pretty Ladies Prymme, Janet and
+Wilhelmina."
+
+"We can't let you off," said, sleepily, Mr. Crampe, a fashionable wit,
+who rarely made more than one bon mot in the twenty-four hours, and spent
+the rest of his time in a torpid state.
+
+VANCE.--"Really you are too kind, but I am not even dressed for--"
+
+LADY SELINA.--"So charmingly dressed-so picturesque!  Besides, what
+matters?  Every one knows who you are.  Where on earth have you been?"
+
+VANCE.--"Rambling about, taking sketches."
+
+LADY SELINA (directing her eyeglass towards Lionel and Sophy, who stood
+aloof).--"But your companions, your brother? and that pretty little
+girl,--your sister, I suppose?"
+
+VANCE (shuddering).--"No, not relations.  I took charge of the boy,--
+clever young fellow; and the little girl is--"
+
+LADY SELINA.--"Yes.  The little girl is--"
+
+VANCE.--"A little girl, as you see: and very pretty, as you say,--subject
+for a picture."
+
+LADY SELINA (indifferently).--"Oh, let the children go and amuse
+themselves somewhere.  Now we have found you; positively you are our
+prisoner."
+
+Lady Selina Vipont was one of the queens of London; she had with her that
+habit of command natural to such royalties.  Frank Vance was no tuft-
+hunter, but once under social influences, they had their effect on him,
+as on most men who are blest with noses in the air.  Those great ladies,
+it is true, never bought his pictures; but they gave him the position
+which induced others to buy them.  Vance loved his art; his art needed
+its career.  Its career was certainly brightened and quickened by the
+help of rank and fashion.
+
+In short, Lady Selina triumphed, and the painter stepped back to Lionel.
+"I must go to Richmond with these people.  I know you'll excuse me.
+I shall be back to-night somehow.  By the by, as you are going to the
+post-office here for the letter you expect from your mother, ask for my
+letters too.  You will take care of little Sophy, and [in a whisper]
+hurry her out of the garden, or that Grand Mogul feminine, Lady Selina,
+whose condescension would crush the Andes, will be stopping her as my
+/protege/, falling in raptures with that horrid coloured print, saying,
+'Dear, what pretty sprigs! where can such things be got?' and learning
+perhaps how Frank Vance saved the Bandit's Child from the Remorseless
+Baron.  'T is your turn now.  Save your friend.  The Baron was a lamb
+compared to a fine lady."  He pressed Lionel's unresponding hand, and was
+off to join the polite merrymaking of the Frosts, Slowes, and Prymmes.
+
+Lionel's pride ran up to the fever-heat of its thermometer; more roused,
+though, on behalf of the unconscious Sophy than himself.
+
+"Let us come into the town, lady-bird, and choose a doll.  You may have
+one now, without fear of distracting you from what I hate to think you
+ever stooped to perform."
+
+As Lionel, his crest erect and nostril dilated, and holding Sophy firmly
+by the hand, took his way out from the gardens, he was obliged to pass
+the patrician party, of whom Vance now made one.
+
+His countenance and air, as he swept by, struck them all, especially Lady
+Selina.  "A very distinguished-looking boy," said she.  "What a fine
+face!  Who did you say he was, Mr. Vance?"
+
+VANCE.--"His name is Haughton,--Lionel Haughton."
+
+LADY SELINA.--"Haughton!  Haughton!  Any relation to poor dear Captain
+Haughton,--Charlie Haughton, as he was generally called?"
+
+Vance, knowing little more of his young friend's parentage than that his
+mother let lodgings, at which, once domiciliated himself, he had made the
+boy's acquaintance, and that she enjoyed the pension of a captain's
+widow, replied carelessly,--
+
+"His father was a captain, but I don't know whether he was a Charlie."
+
+MR. CRAMPE (the wit).--"Charlies are extinct!  I have the last in a
+fossil,--box and all."
+
+General laugh.  Wit shut up again.
+
+LADY SELINA.--"He has a great look of Charlie Haughton.  Do you know if
+he is connected with that extraordinary man, Mr. Darrell?"
+
+VANCE.--"Upon my word, I do not.  What Mr. Darrell do you mean?"
+
+Lady Selina, with one of those sublime looks of celestial pity with which
+personages in the great world forgive ignorance of names and genealogies
+in those not born within its orbit, replied, "Oh, to be sure.  It is not
+exactly in the way of your delightful art to know Mr. Darrell, one of the
+first men in Parliament, a connection of mine."
+
+LADY FROST (nippingly).--"You mean Guy Darrell, the lawyer."
+
+LADY SELINA.--"Lawyer--true; now I think of it, he was a lawyer.  But his
+chief fame was in the House of Commons.  All parties agreed that he might
+have commanded any station; but he was too rich perhaps to care
+sufficiently about office.  At all events, Parliament was dissolved when
+he was at the height of his reputation, and he refused to be re-elected."
+
+One SIR GREGORY STOLLHEAD (a member of the House of Commons, young,
+wealthy, a constant attendant, of great promise, with speeches that were
+filled with facts, and emptied the benches).--"I have heard of him.
+Before my time; lawyers not much weight in the House now."
+
+LADY SELINA.--"I am told that Mr. Darrell did not speak like a lawyer.
+But his career is over; lives in the country, and sees nobody; a thousand
+pities; a connection of mine, too; great loss to the country.  Ask your
+young friend, Mr. Vance, if Mr. Darrell is not his relation.  I hope so,
+for his sake.  Now that our party is in power, Mr. Darrell could command
+anything for others, though he has ceased to act with us.  Our party is
+not forgetful of talent."
+
+LADY FROST (with icy crispness).--"I should think not: it has so little
+of that kind to remember."
+
+SIR GREGORY.--"Talent is not wanted in the House of Commons now; don't go
+down, in fact.  Business assembly."
+
+LADY SELINA (suppressing a yawn).--"Beautiful day!  We had better think
+of going back to Richmond."
+
+General assent, and slow retreat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+     The historian records the attachment to public business which
+     distinguishes the British legislator.--Touching instance of the
+     regret which ever in patriotic bosoms attends the neglect of a
+     public duty.
+
+From the dusty height of a rumble-tumble affixed to Lady Selina Vipont's
+barouche, and by the animated side of Sir Gregory Stollhead, Vance caught
+sight of Lionel and Sophy at a corner of the spacious green near the
+Palace.  He sighed; he envied them.  He thought of the boat, the water,
+the honeysuckle arbour at the little inn,--pleasures he had denied
+himself,--pleasures all in his own way.  They seemed still more alluring
+by contrast with the prospect before him; formal dinner at the Star and
+Garter, with titled Prymmes, Slowes, and Frosts, a couple of guineas a
+head, including light wines, which he did not drink, and the expense of a
+chaise back by himself.  But such are life and its social duties,--such,
+above all, ambition and a career.  Who that would leave a name on his
+tombstone can say to his own heart, "Perish Stars and Garters: my
+existence shall pass from day to day in honeysuckle arbours!"
+
+Sir Gregory Stollhead interrupted Vance's revery by an impassioned
+sneeze.  "Dreadful smell of hay!" said the legislator, with watery eyes.
+"Are you subject to the hay fever?  I am!  A-tisha-tisha-tisha [sneezing]
+--country frightfully unwholesome at this time of year.  And to think
+that I ought now to be in the House,--in my committee-room; no smell of
+hay there; most important committee."
+
+VANCE (rousing himself).--"Ah--on what?"
+
+SIR GREGORY (regretfully).--"Sewers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+     Signs of an impending revolution, which, like all revolutions, seems
+     to come of a sudden, though its causes have long been at work; and
+     to go off in a tantrum, though its effects must run on to the end of
+     a history.
+
+Lionel could not find in the toy-shops of the village a doll good enough
+to satisfy his liberal inclinations, but he bought one which amply
+contented the humbler aspirations of Sophy.  He then strolled to the
+post-office.  There were several letters for Vance; one for himself in
+his mother's handwriting.  He delayed opening it for the moment.  The day
+was far advanced Sophy must be hungry.  In vain she declared she was not.
+They passed by a fruiterer's stall.  The strawberries and cherries were
+temptingly fresh; the sun still very powerful.  At the back of the
+fruiterer's was a small garden, or rather orchard, smiling cool through
+the open door; little tables laid out there.  The good woman who kept the
+shop was accustomed to the wants and tastes of humble metropolitan
+visitors.  But the garden was luckily now empty: it was before the usual
+hour for tea-parties; so the young folks had the pleasantest table under
+an apple-tree, and the choice of the freshest fruit.  Milk and cakes were
+added to the fare.  It was a banquet, in Sophy's eyes, worthy that happy
+day.  And when Lionel had finished his share of the feast, eating fast,
+as spirited, impatient boys formed to push on in life and spoil their
+digestion are apt to do; and while Sophy was still lingering over the
+last of the strawberries, he threw himself back on his chair and drew
+forth his letter.  Lionel was extremely fond of his mother, but her
+letters were not often those which a boy is over-eager to read.
+It is not all mothers who understand what boys are,--their quick
+susceptibilities, their precocious manliness, all their mystical ways
+and oddities.  A letter from Mrs. Haughton generally somewhat fretted
+and irritated Lionel's high-strung nerves, and he had instinctively put
+off the task of reading the one he held, till satisfied hunger and cool-
+breathing shadows, and rest from the dusty road, had lent their soothing
+aid to his undeveloped philosophy.
+
+He broke the seal slowly; another letter was enclosed within.  At the
+first few words his countenance changed; he uttered a slight exclamation,
+read on eagerly; then, before concluding his mother's epistle, hastily
+tore open that which it had contained, ran his eye over its contents,
+and, dropping both letters on the turf below, rested his face on his hand
+in agitated thought.  Thus ran his mother's letter:
+
+MY DEAR BOY,--How could you!  Do it slyly!!  Unknown to your own mother!!
+I could not believe it of you!!!!  Take advantage of my confidence in
+showing you the letters of your father's cousin, to write to himself--
+clandestinely!--you, who I thought had such an open character, and who
+ought to appreciate mine.  Every one who knows me says I am a woman in
+ten thousand,--not for beauty and talent (though I have had my admirers
+for them too), but for GOODNESS I As a wife and mother, I may say I have
+been exemplary.  I had sore trials with the dear captain--and IMMENSE
+temptations.  But he said on his death-bed, "Jessica, you are an angel."
+And I have had offers since,--IMMENSE offers,--but I devoted myself to my
+child, as you know.  And what I have put up with, letting the first
+floor, nobody can tell; and only a widow's pension,--going before a
+magistrate to get it paid!  And to think my own child, for whom I have
+borne so much, should behave so cruelly to me!  Clandestine! that is that
+which stabs me.  Mrs. Inman found me crying, and said, "What is the
+matter?--you who are such an angel, crying like a baby!"  And I could
+not help saying, "'T is the serpent's tooth, Mrs. L"  What you wrote to
+your benefactor (and I had hoped patron) I don't care to guess; something
+very rude and imprudent it must be, judging by the few lines he addressed
+to me.  I don't mind copying them for you to read.  All my acts are
+aboveboard, as often and often Captain H. used to say, "Your heart is in
+a glass case, Jessica;" and so it is!  but my son keeps his under lock
+and key.
+
+"Madam [this is what he writes to me], your son has thought fit to
+infringe the condition upon which I agreed to assist you on his behalf.
+I enclose a reply to himself, which I beg you will give to his own hands
+without breaking the seal.  Since it did not seem to you indiscreet to
+communicate to a boy of his years letters written solely to yourself, you
+cannot blame me if I take your implied estimate of his capacity to judge
+for himself of the nature of a correspondence, and of the views and
+temper of, madam, your very obedient servant."  And that's all to me.
+
+I send his letter to you,--seal unbroken.  I conclude he has done with
+you forever, and your CAREER is lost!  But if it be so, oh, my poor, poor
+child I at that thought I have not the heart to scold you further.  If it
+be so, come home to me, and I 'll work and slave for you, and you shall
+keep up your head and be a gentleman still, as you are, every inch of
+you.  Don't mind what I've said at the beginning, dear: don't you know
+I'm hasty; and I was hurt.  But you could not mean to be sly and
+underhand: 'twas only your high spirit, and it was my fault; I should not
+have shown you the letters.  I hope you are well, and have quite lost
+that nasty cough, and that Mr. Vance treats you with proper respect.  I
+think him rather too pushing and familiar, though a pleasant young man on
+the whole.  But, after all, he is only a painter  Bless you, my child,
+and don't have secrets again from your poor mother.
+                                             JESSICA HAUGHTON.
+
+The enclosed letter was as follows:--
+
+     LIONEL HAUGHTON,--Some men might be displeased at receiving such a
+     letter as you have addressed to me; I am not.  At your years, and
+     under the same circumstances, I might have written a letter much in
+     the same spirit.  Relieve your mind: as yet you owe me no
+     obligations; you have only received back a debt due to you.  My
+     father was poor; your grandfather, Robert Haughton, assisted him in
+     the cost of my education.  I have assisted your father's son; we are
+     quits.  Before, however, we decide on having done with each other
+     for the future, I suggest to you to pay me a short visit.  Probably
+     I shall not like you, nor you me.  But we are both gentlemen, and
+     need not show dislike too coarsely.  If you decide on coming, come
+     at once, or possibly you may not find me here.  If you refuse, I
+     shall have a poor opinion of your sense and temper, and in a week I
+     shall have forgotten your existence.  I ought to add that your
+     father and I were once warm friends, and that by descent I am the
+     head not only of my own race, which ends with me, but of the
+     Haughton family, of which, though your line assumed the name, it was
+     but a younger branch.  Nowadays young men are probably not brought
+     up to care for these things: I was.  Yours,
+
+                              GUY HAUGHTON DARRELL.
+
+     MANOR HOUSE, FAWLEY.
+
+
+Sophy picked up the fallen letters, placed them on Lionel's lap, and
+looked into his face wistfully.  He smiled, resumed his mother's epistle,
+and read the concluding passages, which he had before omitted.  Their
+sudden turn from reproof to tenderness melted him.  He began to feel that
+his mother had a right to blame him for an act of concealment.  Still she
+never would have consented to his writing such a letter; and had that
+letter been attended with so ill a result?  Again he read Mr. Darrell's
+blunt but not offensive lines.  His pride was soothed: why should he not
+now love his father's friend?  He rose briskly, paid for the fruit, and
+went his way back to the boat with Sophy.  As his oars cut the wave he
+talked gayly, but he ceased to interrogate Sophy on her past.  Energetic,
+sanguine, ambitious, his own future entered now into his thoughts.
+Still, when the sun sank as the inn came partially into view from the
+winding of the banks and the fringe of the willows, his mind again
+settled on the patient, quiet little girl, who had not ventured to ask
+him one question in return for all he had put so unceremoniously to her.
+Indeed, she was silently musing over words he had inconsiderately let
+fall,--"What I hate to think you had ever stooped to perform."  Little
+could Lionel guess the unquiet thoughts which those words might hereafter
+call forth from the brooding deepening meditations of lonely childhood!
+At length said the boy abruptly, as he had said once before,
+
+"I wish, Sophy, you were my sister."  He added in a saddened tone, "I
+never had a sister: I have so longed for one!  However, surely we shall
+meet again.  You go to-morrow so must I."
+
+Sophy's tears flowed softly, noiselessly.
+
+"Cheer up, lady-bird, I wish you liked me half as much as I like you!"
+
+"I do like you: oh, so much!"  cried Soppy, passionately.  "Well, then,
+you can write, you say?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"You shall write to me now and then, and I to you.  I'll talk to your
+grandfather about it.  Ah, there he is, surely!"  The boat now ran into
+the shelving creek, and by the honeysuckle arbour stood Gentleman Waife,
+leaning on his stick.
+
+"You are late," said the actor, as they landed, and Sophy sprang into his
+arms.  "I began to be uneasy, and came here to inquire after you.  You
+have not caught cold, child?"
+
+SOPHY.--"Oh, no."
+
+LIONEL.--"She is the best of children.  Pray, come into the inn, Mr.
+Waife; no toddy, but some refreshment."
+
+WAIFE.--"I thank you,--no, sir; I wish to get home at once.  I walk
+slowly; it will be dark soon."
+
+Lionel tried in vain to detain him.  There was a certain change in Mr.
+Waife's manner to him: it was much more distant; it was even pettish,
+if not surly.  Lionel could not account for it; thought it mere whim at
+first: but as be walked part of the way back with them towards the
+village, this asperity continued, nay increased.  Lionel was hurt; he
+arrested his steps.
+
+"I see you wish to have your grandchild to yourself now.  May I call
+early to-morrow?  Sophy will tell you that I hope we may not altogether
+lose sight of each other.  I will give you my address when I call."
+
+"What time to-morrow, sir?"
+
+"About nine."
+
+Waife bowed his head and walked on, but Sophy looked back towards her boy
+friend, sorrowfully, gratefully; twilight in the skies that had been so
+sunny,--twilight in her face that had been so glad!  She looked back
+once, twice, thrice, as Lionel halted on the road and kissed his hand.
+The third time Waife said with unwonted crossness,--
+
+"Enough of that, Sophy; looking after young men is not proper!  What does
+he mean about 'seeing each other, and giving me his address'?"
+
+"He wished me to write to him sometimes and he would write to me."
+
+Waife's brow contracted; but if, in the excess of grandfatherly caution,
+he could have supposed that the bright-hearted boy of seventeen meditated
+ulterior ill to that fairy child in such a scheme for correspondence, he
+must have been in his dotage, and he had not hitherto evinced any signs
+of that.
+
+Farewell, pretty Sophy!  the evening star shines upon yon elm-tree that
+hides thee from view.  Fading-fading grows the summer landscape; faded
+already from the landscape thy gentle image!  So ends a holiday in life.
+Hallow it, Sophy; hallow it, Lionel!  Life's holidays are not too many!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+     By this chapter it appeareth that he who sets out on a career can
+     scarcely expect to walk in perfect comfort, if he exchanges his own
+     thick-soled shoes for dress-boots which were made for another man's
+     measure, and that the said boots may not the less pinch for being
+     brilliantly varnished.--It also showeth, for the instruction of Men
+     and States, the connection between democratic opinion and wounded
+     self-love; so that, if some Liberal statesman desire to rouse
+     against an aristocracy the class just below it, he has only to
+     persuade a fine lady to be exceedingly civil "to that sort of
+     people."
+
+Vance, returning late at night, found his friend still up in the little
+parlour, the windows open, pacing the floor with restless strides,
+stopping now and then to look at the moon upon the river.
+
+"Such a day as I have had! and twelve shillings for the fly, 'pikes not
+included," said Vance, much out of humour--
+
+               "'I fly from plate, I fly from pomp,
+
+I fly from falsehood's specious grin;' I forget the third line.  I know
+the last is--"
+
+               'To find my welcome at an inn.'
+
+You are silent: I annoyed you by going--could not help it--pity me, and
+lock up your pride."
+
+"No, my dear Vance, I was hurt for a moment, but that's long since over!"
+
+"Still you seem to have something on your mind," said Vance, who had now
+finished reading his letters, lighted his cigar, and was leaning against
+the window as the boy continued to walk to and fro.
+
+"That is true: I have.  I should like your advice.  Read that letter.
+Ought I to go?  Would it look mercenary, grasping?  You know what I
+mean."
+
+Vance approached the candles and took the letter.  He glanced first at
+the signature.  "Darrell," he exclaimed.  "Oh, it is so, then!"  He read
+with great attention, put down the letter, and shook Lionel by the hand.
+"I congratulate you: all is settled as it should be.  Go? of course: you
+would be an ill-mannered lout if you did not.  Is it far from hence must
+you return to town first?"
+
+LIONEL.--"No, I find I can get across the country,--two hours by the
+railway.  There is a station at the town which bears the post-mark of the
+letter.  I shall make for that, if you advise it."
+
+"You knew I should advise it, or you would not have tortured your
+intellect by those researches into Bradshaw."
+
+"Shrewdly said," answered Lionel, laughing; "but I wished for your
+sanction of my crude impressions."
+
+"You never told me your cousin's name was Darrell: not that I should have
+been much wiser if you had; but, thunder and lightning, Lionel!  do you
+know that your cousin Darrell is a famous man?"
+
+LIONEL.--"Famous!--Nonsense.  I suppose he was a good lawyer, for I have
+heard my mother say, with a sort of contempt, that he had made a great
+fortune at the bar."
+
+VANCE.--"But he was in Parliament."
+
+LIONEL.--"Was he?  I did not know."
+
+VANCE.--"And this is senatorial fame!  You never heard your schoolfellows
+talk of Mr. Darrell?--they would not have known his name if you had
+boasted of it?"
+
+LIONEL.--"Certainly not."
+
+VANCE.--"Would your schoolfellows have known the names of Wilkie, of
+Landseer, of Turner, Maclise?  I speak of painters."
+
+LIONEL.--"I should think so, indeed."
+
+VANCE (soliloquizing).--"And yet Her Serene Sublimity-ship, Lady Selina
+Vipont, says to me with divine compassion, 'Not in the way of your
+delightful art to know such men as Mr. Darrell!'  Oh, as if I did not see
+through it, too, when she said, /a propos/ of my jean cap and velveteen
+jacket, 'What matters how you dress?  Every one knows who you are!'
+Would she have said that to the earl of Dunder, or even to Sir Gregory
+Stollhead?  No.  I am the painter Frank Vance,--nothing more nor less;
+and if I stood on my head in a check shirt and a sky-coloured apron, Lady
+Selina Vipont would kindly murmur, 'Only Frank Vance the painter: what
+does it signify?'  Aha!--and they think to put me to use, puppets and lay
+figures! it is I who put them to use!  Hark ye, Lionel, you are nearer
+akin to these fine folks than I knew of.  Promise me one thing: you may
+become of their set, by right of your famous Mr. Darrell; if ever you
+hear an artist, musician, scribbler, no matter what, ridiculed as a tuft-
+hunter,--seeking the great, and so forth,--before you join in the laugh,
+ask some great man's son, with a pedigree that dates from the Ark, 'Are
+you not a toad-eater too?  Do you want political influence; do you stand
+contested elections; do you curry and fawn upon greasy Sam the butcher
+and grimy Tom the blacksmith for a vote?  Why? useful to your career,
+necessary to your ambition?  Aha! is it meaner to curry and fawn upon
+white-handed women and elegant coxcombs?  Tut, tut! useful to a career,
+necessary to ambition!'"  Vance paused, out of breath.  The spoiled
+darling of the circles,--he, to talk such republican rubbish!  Certainly
+he must have taken his two guineas' worth out of those light wines.
+Nothing so treacherous! they inflame the brain like fire, while melting
+on the palate like ice.  All inhabitants of lightwine countries are
+quarrelsome and democratic.
+
+LIONEL (astounded).--"No one, I am sure, could have meant to call you a
+tuft-hunter; of course, every one knows that a great painter--"
+
+VANCE.--"Dates from Michael Angelo, if not from Zeuxis!  Common
+individuals trace their pedigree from their own fathers! the children of
+Art from Art's founders!"
+
+Oh, Vance, Vance, you are certainly drunk!  If that comes from dining
+with fine people at the Star and Garter, you would be a happier man and
+as good a painter if your toddy were never sipped save in honeysuckle
+arbours.
+
+"But," said Lionel, bewildered, and striving to turn his friend's
+thoughts, "what has all this to do with Mr. Darrell?"
+
+VANCE.--"Mr. Darrell might have been one of the first men in the kingdom.
+Lady Selina Vipout says so, and she is related, I believe, to every
+member in the Cabinet.  Mr. Darrell can push you in life, and make your
+fortune, without any great trouble on your own part.  Bless your stars,
+and rejoice that you are not a painter!"
+
+Lionel flung his arm round the artist's broad breast.  "Vance, you are
+cruel!"  It was his turn to console the painter, as the painter had three
+nights before /a propos/ of the same Mr. Darrell consoled him.  Vance
+gradually sobered down, and the young men walked forth in the moonlight.
+And the eternal stars had the same kind looks for Vance as they had
+vouchsafed to Lionel.
+
+"When do you start?"  asked the painter, as they mounted the stairs to
+bed.
+
+"To-morrow evening.  I miss the early train, for I must call first and
+take leave of Sophy.  I hope I may see her again in after life."
+
+"And I hope, for your sake, that if so, she may not be in the same
+coloured print, with Lady Selina Vipont's eyeglass upon her!"
+
+"What!" said Lionel, laughing; "is Lady Selina Vipont so formidably
+rude?"
+
+"Rude! nobody is rude in that delightful set.  Lady Selina Vipont is
+excruciatingly--civil."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+     Being devoted exclusively to a reflection, not inapposite to the
+     events in this history nor to those in any other which chronicles
+     the life of men.
+
+There is one warning lesson in life which few of us have not received,
+and no book that I can call to memory has noted down with an adequate
+emphasis.  It is this: "Beware of parting!"  The true sadness is not in
+the pain of the parting, it is in the When and the How you are to meet
+again with the face about to vanish from your view!  From the passionate
+farewell to the woman who has your heart in her keeping, to the cordial
+good-by exchanged with pleasant companions at a watering-place, a
+country-house, or the close of a festive day's blithe and careless
+excursion,--a cord,  stronger or weaker, is snapped asunder in every
+parting, and Time's busy fingers are not practised in re-splicing broken
+ties.  Meet again you may; will it be in the same way?--with the same
+sympathies?--with the same sentiments?  Will the souls, hurrying on in
+diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream?
+Rarely, rarely!  Have you not, after even a year, even a month's absence,
+returned to the same place, found the same groups reassembled, and yet
+sighed to yourself, "But where is the charm that once breathed from the
+spot, and once smiled from the faces?"  A poet has said, "Eternity itself
+cannot restore the loss struck from the minute."  Are you happy in the
+spot on which you tarry with the persons whose voices are now melodious
+to your ear? beware of parting; or, if part you must, say not in insolent
+defiance to Time and Destiny, "What matters!--we shall soon meet again."
+
+Alas, and alas!  when we think of the lips which murmured, "Soon meet
+again," and remember how in heart, soul, and thought, we stood forever
+divided the one from the other, when, once more face to face, we each
+inly exclaimed, "Met again!"
+
+The air that we breathe makes the medium through which sound is conveyed;
+be the instrument unchanged, be the force which is applied to it the
+same, still the air that thou seest not, the air to thy ear gives the
+music.
+
+Ring a bell underneath an exhausted receiver, thou wilt scarce hear the
+sound; give the bell due vibration by free air in warm daylight, or sink
+it down to the heart of the ocean, where the air, all compressed, fills
+the vessel around it,' and the chime, heard afar, starts thy soul, checks
+thy footstep, unto deep calls the deep,--a voice from the ocean is borne
+to thy soul.
+
+Where then the change, when thou sayest, "Lo, the same metal,--why so
+faint-heard the ringing?"  Ask the air that thou seest not, or above thee
+in sky, or below thee in ocean.  Art thou sure that the bell, so faint-
+heard, is not struck underneath an exhausted receiver?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+     The wandering inclinations of nomad tribes not to be accounted for
+     on the principles of action peculiar to civilized men, who are
+     accustomed to live in good houses and able to pay the income tax.--
+     When the money that once belonged to a man civilized vanishes into
+     the pockets of a nomad, neither lawful art nor occult science can,
+     with certainty, discover what he will do with it.--Mr. Vance
+     narrowly escapes well-merited punishment from the nails of the
+     British Fair--Lionel Haughton, in the temerity of youth, braves the
+     dangers of a British Railway.
+
+The morning was dull and overcast, rain gathering in the air, when Vance
+and Lionel walked to Waife's lodging.  As Lionel placed his hand on the
+knocker of the private door, the Cobbler, at his place by the window in
+the stall beside, glanced towards him, and shook his head.
+
+"No use knocking, gentlemen.  Will you kindly step in?--this way."
+
+"Do you mean that your lodgers are out?"  asked Vance.
+
+"Gone!" said the Cobbler, thrusting his awl with great vehemence through
+the leather destined to the repair of a ploughman's boot.
+
+"Gone--for good!"  cried Lionel; "you cannot mean it.  I call by
+appointment."
+
+"Sorry, sir, for your trouble.  Stop a bit; I have a letter here for
+you."  The Cobbler dived into a drawer, and from a medley of nails and
+thongs drew forth a letter addressed to  L. Haughton, Esq.
+
+"Is this from Waife?  How on earth did he know my surname?  you never
+mentioned it, Vance?"
+
+"Not that I remember.  But you said you found him at the inn, and they
+knew it there.  It is on the brass-plate of your knapsack.  No matter,--
+what does he say?"  and Vance looked over his friend's shoulder and read.
+
+     SIR,--I most respectfully thank you for your condescending kindness
+     to me and my grandchild; and your friend, for his timely and
+     generous aid.  You will pardon me that the necessity which knows no
+     law obliges me to leave this place some hours before the time of
+     your proposed visit.  My grandchild says you intended to ask her
+     sometimes to write to you.  Excuse me, sir--on reflection, you will
+     perceive how different your ways of life are from those which she
+     must tread with me.  You see before you a man who--but I forget; you
+     see him no more, and probably never will.
+
+     Your most humble and most obliged, obedient servant,
+
+                                                       W.  W.
+
+VANCE.--"Who never more may trouble you--trouble you!  Where have they
+gone?"
+
+COBBLER.--"Don't know; would you like to take a peep in the crystal--
+perhaps you've the gift, unbeknown?"
+
+VANCE.--"Not I--bah!  Come away, Lionel."
+
+"Did not Sophy even leave any message for me?"  asked the boy,
+sorrowfully.
+
+"To be sure she did; I forgot-no, not exactly a message, but this--I was
+to be sure to give it to you."  And out of his miscellaneous receptacle
+the Cobbler extracted a little book.  Vance looked and laughed,--"The
+Butterflies' Ball and the Grasshoppers' Feast."
+
+Lionel did not share the laugh.  He plucked the book to himself, and read
+on the fly-leaf, in a child's irregular scrawl, blistered, too, with the
+unmistakable trace of fallen tears, these words:--
+
+     Do not Scorn it.  I have nothing else I can think of which is All
+     Mine.  Miss Jane Burton gave it me for being Goode.  Grandfather
+     says you are too high for us, and that I shall not see you More; but
+     I shall never forget how kind you were, never--never.  Sophy.
+
+Said the Cobbler, his awl upright in the hand which rested on his knee,
+"What a plague did the 'Stronomers discover Herschel for?  You see, sir,"
+addressing Vance, "things odd and strange all come along o' Herschel."
+
+"What!--Sir John?"
+
+"No, the star he poked out.  He's a awful star for females! hates 'em
+like poison!  I suspect he's been worriting hisself into her nativity,
+for I got out from her the year, month, and day she was born, hour
+unbeknown, but, calkeiating by noon, Herschel was dead agin her in the
+Third and Ninth House,--Voyages, Travels, Letters, News, Church Matters,
+and such like.  But it will all come right after he's transited.  Her
+Jupiter must be good.  But I only hope," added the Cobbler, solemnly,
+"that they won't go a-discovering any more stars.  The world did a deal
+better without the new one, and they do talk of a Neptune--as bad as
+Saturn!"
+
+"And this is the last of her!"  said Lionel, sadly, putting the book into
+his breast-pocket.  "Heaven shield her wherever she goes!"
+
+VANCE.--"Don't you think Waife and the poor little girl will come back
+again?"
+
+COBBLER.--"P'raps; I know he was looking hard into the county map at the
+stationer's over the way; that seems as if he did not mean to go very
+far.  P'raps he may come back."
+
+VANCE.--"Did he take all his goods with him?"
+
+COBBLER.--"Barrin' an old box,--nothing in it, I expect, but theatre
+rubbish,--play-books, paints, an old wig, and sick like.  He has good
+clothes,--always had; and so has she, but they don't make more than a
+bundle."
+
+VANCE. "But surely you must know what the old fellow's project is.  He
+has got from me a great sum: what will he do with it?"
+
+COBBLER.--"Just what has been a-bothering me.  What will he do with it?
+I cast a figure to know; could not make it out.  Strange signs in Twelfth
+House.  Enemies and Big Animals.  Well, well, he's a marbellous man, and
+if he warn't a misbeliever in the crystal, I should say he was under
+Herschel; for you see, sir" (laying hold of Vance's button, as he saw
+that gentleman turning to escape),--"you see Herschel, though he be a
+sinister chap eno', specially in affairs connected with t' other sex,
+disposes the native to dive into the mysteries of natur'.  I'm a Herschel
+man, out and outer; born in March, and--"
+
+"As mad as its hares," muttered Vance, wrenching his button from the
+Cobbler's grasp, and impatiently striding off.  But he did not effect his
+escape so easily, for, close at hand, just at the corner of the lane, a
+female group, headed by Merle's gaunt housekeeper, had been silently
+collecting from the moment the two friends had paused at the Cobbler's
+door.  And this petticoated divan suddenly closing round the painter, one
+pulled him by the sleeve, another by the jacket, and a third, with a nose
+upon which somebody had sat in early infancy, whispered, "Please, sir,
+take my picter fust."
+
+Vance stared aghast,--"Your picture, you drab!"  Here another model of
+rustic charms, who might have furnished an ideal for the fat scullion in
+"Tristram Shandy," bobbing a courtesy put in her rival claim.
+
+"Sir, if you don't objex to coming into the kitching after the family has
+gone to bed, I don't care if I lets you make a minnytur of me for two
+pounds."
+
+"Miniature of you, porpoise!"
+
+"Polly, sir, not Porpus,--ax pardon.  I shall clean myself, and I have a
+butyful new cap,--Honeytun, and--"
+
+"Let the gentleman go, will you?"  said a third; "I am surprised at ye,
+Polly.  The kitching, unbeknown!  Sir, I'm in the nussery; yes, sir; and
+Alissus says you may take me any time, purvided you'll take the babby, in
+the back parlour; yes, sir, No. 5 in the High Street.  Mrs. Spratt,--yes,
+sir.  Babby has had the small-pox; in case you're a married gentleman
+with a family; quite safe there; yes, sir."
+
+Vance could endure no more, and, forgetful of that gallantry which should
+never desert the male sex, burst through the phalanx with an anathema,
+blackening alike the beauty and the virtue of those on whom it fell, that
+would have justified a cry of shame from every manly bosom, and which at
+once changed into shrill wrath the supplicatory tones with which he had
+been hitherto addressed.  Down the street he hurried and down the street
+followed the insulted fair.  "Hiss--hiss--no gentleman, no gentleman!
+Aha-skulk off--do--low blaggurd!" shrieked Polly.  From their counters
+shop-folks rushed to their doors.  Stray dogs, excited by the clamour,
+ran wildly after the fugitive man, yelping "in madding bray"!  Vance,
+fearing to be clawed by the females if he merely walked, sure to be
+bitten by the dogs if he ran, ambled on, strove to look composed, and
+carry his nose high in its native air, till, clearing the street, he saw
+a hedgerow to the right; leaped it with an agility which no stimulus less
+preternatural than that of self-preservation could have given to his
+limbs, and then shot off like an arrow, and did not stop, till, out of
+breath, he dropped upon the bench in the sheltering honeysuckle arbour.
+Here he was still fanning himself with his cap, and muttering
+unmentionable expletives, when he was joined by Lionel, who had tarried
+behind to talk more about Sophy to the Cobbler, and who, unconscious that
+the din which smote his ear was caused by his ill-starred friend, had
+been enticed to go upstairs and look after Sophy in the crystal,--vainly.
+When Vance had recited his misadventures, and Lionel had sufficiently
+condoled with him, it became time for the latter to pay his share of the
+bill, pack up his knapsack, and start for the train.  Now, the station
+could only be reached by penetrating the heart of the village, and Vance
+swore that he had had enough of that.  "Peste!" said he; "I should pass
+right before No. 5 in the High Street, and the nuss and the babby will be
+there on the threshold, like Virgil's picture of the infernal regions,
+
+               "'Infantumque anima; flentes in limine primo.'
+
+We will take leave of each other here.  I shall go by the boat to
+Chertsey whenever I shall have sufficiently recovered my shaken nerves.
+There are one or two picturesque spots to be seen in that neighbourhood.
+In a few days I shall be in town! write to me there, and tell me how you
+get on.  Shake hands, and Heaven speed you.  But, ah! now you have paid
+your moiety of the bill, have you enough left for the train?"
+
+"Oh, yes, the fare is but a few shillings; but, to be sure, a fly to
+Fawley?  I ought not to go on foot" (proudly); "and, too, supposing he
+affronts me, and I have to leave his house suddenly?  May I borrow a
+sovereign?  My mother will call and repay it."
+
+VANCE (magnificently).--"There it is, and not much more left in my
+purse,--that cursed Star and Garter! and those three pounds!"
+
+LIONEL (sighing).--"Which were so well spent!  Before you sell that
+picture, do let me make a copy."
+
+VANCE.--"Better take a model of your own.  Village full of them; you
+could bargain with a porpoise for half the money which I was duped into
+squandering away on a chit!  But don't look so grave; you may copy me if
+you can!"
+
+"Time to start, and must walk brisk, sir," said the jolly landlord,
+looking in.
+
+"Good-by, good-by."
+
+And so departed Lionel Haughton upon an emprise as momentous to that
+youth-errant as Perilous Bridge or Dragon's Cave could have been to
+knight-errant of old.
+
+"Before we decide on having done with each other, a short visit,"--so ran
+the challenge from him who had everything to give unto him who had
+everything to gain.  And how did Lionel Haughton, the ambitious and
+aspiring, contemplate the venture in which success would admit him within
+the gates of the golden Carduel an equal in the lists with the sons of
+paladins, or throw him back to the arms of the widow who let a first
+floor in the back streets of Pimlico?  Truth to say, as he strode
+musingly towards the station for starting, where the smoke-cloud now
+curled from the wheel-track of iron, truth to say, the anxious doubt
+which disturbed him was not that which his friends might have felt on his
+behalf.  In words, it would have shaped itself thus,--"Where is that poor
+little Sophy! and what will become of her--what?"  But when, launched on
+the journey, hurried on to its goal, the thought of the ordeal before him
+forced itself on his mind, he muttered inly to himself, "Done with each
+other; let it be as he pleases, so that I do not fawn on his pleasure.
+Better a million times enter life as a penniless gentleman, who must work
+his way up like a man, than as one who creeps on his knees into fortune,
+shaming birthright of gentleman or soiling honour of man."  Therefore
+taking into account the poor cousin's vigilant pride on the /qui vive/
+for offence, and the rich cousin's temper (as judged by his letters) rude
+enough to resent it, we must own that if Lionel Haughton has at this
+moment what is commonly called "a chance," the question as yet is not,
+What is that chance? but, What will he do with it?  And as the reader
+advances in this history, he will acknowledge that there are few
+questions in this world so frequently agitated, to which the solution is
+more important to each puzzled mortal than that upon which starts every
+sage's discovery, every novelist's plot,--that which applies to MAN'S
+LIFE, from its first sleep in the cradle, "WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V1 ***
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