What Will He Do With It | Page 7

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