master's pockets; he appealed touchingly to
the child, and finally put back his head and vented his emotion in a
lugubrious and elegiacal howl. Suddenly there is heard without the sound
of a showman's tin trumpet! Whether the actor had got some obliging
person to perform on that instrument, or whether, as more likely, it was
but a trick of ventriloquism, we leave to conjecture. At that note, an
idea seemed to seize the dog. He ran first to his master, who was on the
threshold about to depart; pulled him back into the centre of the room:
next he ran to the child, dragging her towards the same spot, though
with great tenderness, and then, uttering a joyous bark, he raised
himself on his hind legs and, with incomparable solemnity, performed a
minuet step! The child catches the idea from the dog. Was he not more
worth seeing than the puppet-show in the streets? might not people give
money to see him, and the old soldier still keep his cross? To-day
there is a public fete in the gardens yonder: that showman must be going
thither; why not go too? What! he the old soldier,--he stoop to show off
a dog! he! he! The dog looked at him deprecatingly and stretched himself
on the floor--lifeless.

Yes, that is the alternative--shall his child die too, and he be too
proud to save her? Ah! and if the cross can be saved also! But pshaw!
what did the dog know that people would care to see? Oh, much, much.
When the child was alone and sad, it would come and play with her. See
those old dominos! She ranged them on the floor, and the dog leaped up
and came to prove his skill. Artfully, then, the Comedian had planned
that the dog should make some sad mistakes, alternated by some
marvellous surprises. No, he would not do: yes, he would do. The
audience took it seriously, and became intensely interested in the dog's
success; so sorry for his blunders, so triumphant in his lucky hits.
And then the child calmed the hasty irritable old man so sweetly, and
corrected the dog so gently, and talked to the animal; told it how much
they relied on it, and produced her infant alphabet, and spelt out "Save
us." The dog looked at the letters meditatively, and henceforth it was
evident that he took more pains. Better and better; he will do, he will
do! The child shall not starve, the cross shall not be sold. Down drops
the curtain. End of Act I.

Act II. opens with a dialogue spoken off the stage. Invisible dramatis
persona, that subsist, with airy tongue