g lady to your
care--young lady is a more respectful phrase than girl--and possibly to
dispense with Mr. Waife's consent to such arrangement. But excuse me if
I say that I must know a little more of yourself, before I could promise
to exert such a power on your behalf."

RUGGE.--"Sir, I shall be proud to improve our acquaintance. As to Waife,
the old vagabond, he has injured and affronted me, sir. I don't bear
malice, but I have a spirit: Britons have a spirit, sir. And you will
remember, ma'am, that when I accompanied you home, I observed that Mr.
Waife was a mysterious man, and had apparently known better days, and
that when a man is mysterious, and falls into the sear and yellow leaf,
ma'am, without that which should accompany old age, sir, one has a right
to suspect that some time or other, he has done something or other,
ma'am, which makes him fear lest the very stones prate of his
whereabout, sir. And you did not deny, ma'am, that the mystery was
suspicious; but you said, with uncommon good sense, that it was nothing
to me what Mr. Waife had once been, so long as he was of use to me
at that particular season. Since then, sir, he has ceased to be of
use,--ceased, too, in the unhandsomest manner. And if you would, ma'am,
from a sense of justice, just unravel the mystery, put me in possession
of the secret, it might make that base man of use to me again, give me
a handle over him, sir, so that I might awe him into restoring my
property, as, morally speaking, Juliet Araminta most undoubtedly is.
That's why I call,--leaving my company, to which I am a father, orphans
for the present. But I have missed that little girl,--that young lady,
sir. I called her a phenomenon, ma'am; missed her much: it is natural,
sir, I appeal to you. No man can be done out of a valuable property and
not feel it, if he has a heart in his bosom. And if I had her back safe,
I should indulge ambition. I have always had ambition. The theatre at
York, sir,--that is my ambition; I had it from a child, sir; dreamed of
it three tunes, ma'am. If I had back my property in that phenomenon,
I would go at the thing, slap-bang, take the York, and bring out the
phenomenon with A CLAW!"

LOSELY (musingly).--"You say the young lady is a phenomenon, and for
this phenomenon you are willing to pay something handsome,--a vague
expression. Put it into L. s. d."

RUGGE.--"Sir, if she can be bound to me legally for three years, I would
give L100. I did offer to W