Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/309

 supposed to have relinquished that earlier engagement, and left your stage with her grandfather, William Waife. I am instructed by a distinguished client, who is wealthy, and who from motives of mere benevolence interests himself in the said William and Sophy Waife, to discover their residence. Please, therefore, to render up the child to my charge, apprising me also of the address of her grandfather, if he be not with you; and without waiting for further instructions from my client, who is abroad, I will venture to say that any sacrifice in the loss of your juvenile actress will be most liberally compensated."

"Sir," cried the miserable and imprudent Rugge, "I paid L100 for that fiendish child,—a three years' engagement,—and I have been robbed. Restore me the L100, and I will tell you where she is, and her vile grandfather also."

At hearing so bad a character lavished upon objects recommended to his client's disinterested charity, the wary solicitor drew in his pecuniary horns.

"Mr. Rugge," said he, "I understand from your words that you cannot place the child Sophy, alias Juliet Araminta, in my hands. You ask L100 to inform me where she is. Have you a lawful claim on her?"

"Certainly, sir: she is my property."

"Then it is quite clear that though you may know where she is, you cannot get at her yourself, and cannot, therefore, place her in my hands. Perhaps she 's—in Heaven!"

"Confound her, sir! no—in America! or on the seas to it."

"Are you sure?"

"I have just come from the steam-packet office, and seen the names in their book. William and Sophy Waife sailed from Liverpool last Thursday week."

"And they formed an engagement with you, received your money; broke the one, absconded with the other. Bad characters indeed!"

"Bad! you may well say that,—a set of swindling scoundrels, the whole kit and kin. And the ingratitude!" continued Rugge; "I was more than a father to that child" (he began to whimper); "I had a babe of my own once; died of convulsions in teething. I thought that child would have supplied its place, and I dreamed of the York Theatre; but"—here his voice was lost in the folds of a marvellously dirty red pocket-handkerchief.

Mr. Gotobed having now, however, learned all that he cared