Agnes in the end confesses herself guilty of the crime for which he is condemned to death;—in time to save his name from lasting disgrace, though not in time to save his life.
Who Was The Witch? though in parts amusing enough, is hardly so good as the others. Modern English puns sit oddly upon a background of pre-mediæval Saxon history. Grimhaggard Hall is perhaps one of A. L. O. E.’s most comic and laughable jeux-d’esprit, over which one can picture the family as enjoying many a hearty laugh. The perpetual play upon words, and the almost rollicking fun and nonsense of the whole, remind one of her earlier effort, The Pretender, already given at length; though the later-written farce is in some respects scarcely equal to the girlish achievement. Both these plays illustrate well the frisky and frolicsome side of a character which was in some respects not only intensely serious, but absolutely stern. Charlotte Tucker’s was truly a many-sided nature.
Whether at this time she had already begun to write anything in the shape of children’s story-books does not appear. It is by no means unlikely, since the date of her first appearance in print was now fast drawing near.
The chief characters in Grimhaggard Hall are—Mr. Cramp; Mr. Scull, an artist; Mr. Wriggle, a tutor; Miss Cob; and Nellie, daughter of Mr. Cramp.
ACT I.
Library in Grimhaggard Hall. Nellie and Mr. Wriggle.
Nellie. O my dear old Tutor, I shall be so sorry to lose you! I wish that my good Father had kept to his old plan, and instead of sending Bob to College had kept both you and him here. This house is so intolerably dull. When you are gone I shall sit looking at the old stones in the old wall, till I petrify into one myself. Why, the very spiders’ webs look as though there were no business doing in them, and not a fly nor even a broom would call at the door! Heigh-ho!
Wrig. You forget, honoured Madam, the governess, Miss Cob, who is expected here to-morrow.
Nell. A governess; the horror! then I hear that she is an oddity; so absent; very learned though, and extremely well-informed. I am rather old for a governess; I was seventeen last March. It would have been quite a different thing to have gone on with my studies here with you and Bob. Do you know that, without vanity, I consider that I have made amazing progress during the month that you have been here?
Wrig. In Geography, Madam, for instance. Let me have the honour of recalling to your oblivious memory that only yesterday you forgot the situation of Guinea.