Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/218

 Ay—ay—and you! what would you do?"

WAIFE.—"Why, I and the dog would go away for a little while about the country."

HARTOPP.—"Exhibiting?"

WAIFE.—"That money will not last forever, and what can we do, I and the dog, in order to get more for her?"

HARTOPP (pressing his hand warmly).—"You are a good man, sir. I am sure of it; you cannot have done things which you should be afraid to tell me. Make me your confidant, and I may then find some employment fit for you, and you need not separate yourself from your little girl."

WAIFE.—"Separate from her! I should only leave her for a few days at a time till she gets well. This money would keep her,—how long? Two months? three? how long? the doctor would not charge much."

HARTOPP.—"YOU will not confide in me then? At your age,—have you no friends,—no one to speak a good word for you?"

WAIFE (jerking up his head with a haughty air).—"So—so! Who talks to you about me, sir? I am speaking of my innocent child. Does she want a good word spoken for her? Heaven has written it in her face."

Hartopp persisted no more; the excellent man was sincerely grieved at his visitor's obstinate avoidance of the true question at issue; for the Mayor could have found employment for a man of Waife's evident education and talent. But such employment would entail responsibilities and trust. How recommend to it a man of whose life and circumstances nothing could be known,—a man without a character? And Waife interested him deeply. We have all felt that there are some persons towards whom we are attracted by a peculiar sympathy not to be explained,—a something in the manner, the cut of the face, the tone of the voice. If there are fifty applicants for a benefit in our gift, one of the fifty wins his way to our preference at first sight, though with no better right to it than his fellows. We can no more say why we like the man than we can say why we fall in love with a woman in whom no one else would discover a charm. "There is," says a Latin love-poet, "no why or wherefore in liking." Hartopp, therefore, had taken, from the first moment, to Waife,—the staid, respectable, thriving man, all muffled up from head to foot in the whitest lawn of reputation,—to the wandering, shifty, tricksome scatterling, who had not seemingly