Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/162

 Waife, and who on entering the town of Gatesboro' becomes a sober, staid, and respectable personage, under the appellation of Chapman. You are Miss Chapman. Rugge and his Exhibition 'leave not a wrack behind.'"

Sophy smiled, and then sighed,—the smile for her grandfather's gay spirits; wherefore the sigh? Was it that some instinct in that fresh, loyal nature revolted from the thought of these aliases, which, if requisite for safety, were still akin to imposture? If so, poor child, she had much yet to set right with her conscience! All I can say is, that after she had smiled she sighed. And more reasonably might a reader ask his author to subject a zephyr to the microscope than a female's sigh to analysis.

"Take the dog with you, my dear, back into the lane; I will join you in a few minutes. You are neatly dressed, and, if not, would look so. I, in this old coat, have the air of a pedler, so I will change it, and enter the town of Gatesboro' in the character of—a man whom you will soon see before you. Leave those things alone, de-Isaacized Sir Isaac! Follow your mistress,—go!"

Sophy left the wood, and walked on slowly towards the town, with her hand pensively resting on Sir Isaac's head. In less than ten minutes she was joined by Waife, attired in respectable black; his hat and shoes well brushed; a new green shade to his eye; and with his finest air of _Pere noble_. He was now in his favourite element. HE WAS ACTING: call it not imposture. Was Lord Chatham an impostor when he draped his flannels into the folds of the toga, and arranged the curls of his wig so as to add more sublime effect to the majesty of his brow and the terrors of its nod? And certainly, considering that Waife, after all, was but a professional vagabond, considering all the turns and shifts to which he has been put for bread and salt, the wonder is, not that he is full of stage tricks and small deceptions, but that he has contrived to retain at heart so much childish simplicity. When a man for a series of years has only had his wits to live by, I say not that he is necessarily a rogue,—he may be a good fellow; but you can scarcely expect his code of honour to be precisely the same as Sir Philip Sidney's. Homer expresses through the lips of Achilles that sublime love of truth which even in those remote times was the becoming characteristic of a gentleman and a soldier. But then, Achilles is well off during his whole life, which, though distinguished, is short. On the other hand Ulysses, who is sorely put to it,