Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/258

 conditions with her: either you must take back her grandfather, or—she must return to him."

"And my L100?"

"In the latter case ought to be repaid to you."

"Am I never to have the Royal York Theatre? Ambition of my life, ma'am. Dreamed of it thrice! Ha! but she will act; and succeed. But to take back the old vagabond,—a bitter pill. He shall halve it with me! Ma'am, I'm your grateful—"

CHAPTER VI.

Threadbare is the simile which compares the world to a stage. Schiller, less complimentary than Shakspeare, lowers the illustration from a stage to a puppet-show. But ever between realities and shows there is a secret communication, an undetected interchange,—sometimes a stern reality in the heart of the ostensible actor, a fantastic stage-play in the brain of the unnoticed spectator. The bandit's child on the proscenium is still poor little Sophy, in spite of garlands and rouge. But that honest rough-looking fellow to whom, in respect for services to sovereign and country, the apprentice yields way, may he not be—the crafty Comedian?

TARAN-TARANTARA! rub-a-dub-dub! play up horn! roll drum! a quarter to eight; and the crowd already thick before Rugge's Grand Exhibition,—" Remorseless Baron and Bandit's Child! Young Phenomenon,—Juliet Araminta,—Patronized by the Nobility in general, and expecting daily to be summoned to perform before the Queen,—_Vivat Regina!_"—Ruba-dub-dub! The company issue from the curtain, range in front of the proscenuim. Splendid dresses. The Phenomenon!--'t is she!

"My eyes, there's a beauty!" cries the clown.

The days have already grown somewhat shorter; but it is not yet dusk. How charmingly pretty she still is, despite that horrid paint; but how wasted those poor bare snowy arms!

A most doleful lugubrious dirge mingles with the drum and horn. A man has forced his way close by the stage,—a man with a confounded cracked hurdy-gurdy. Whine! whine! creaks the hurdy-gurdy. "Stop that! stop that mu-zeek!" cries a delicate apprentice, clapping his hands to his ears. "Pity a poor blind—" answers the man with the hurdygurdy.

"Oh, you are blind, are you? but we are not deaf. There's a penny not to play. What black thing have you got there by a string?"

"My