A boy of fourteen, not yet out of Czerny’s exercises.
Agatha Posket.
[To herself.] If we were alone now, I might have the desperation to tell him all!
Mr. Posket.
Besides, my darling, you know the interest I take in Miss Tomlinson; she is one of the brightest little spots on my hobby-horse. Like all our servants, like everybody in my employ, she has been brought to my notice through the unhappy medium of the Police Court over which it is my destiny to preside. Our servant, Wyke, a man with a beautiful nature, is the son of a person I committed for trial for marrying three wives. To this day, Wyke is ignorant as to which of those three wives he is the son of! Cook was once a notorious dipsomaniac, and has even now not entirely freed herself from early influences. Popham is the unclaimed charge of a convicted baby-farmer. Even our milkman came before me as a man who had refused to submit specimens to the analytic inspector. And this poor child, what is she?
Agatha Posket.
Yes, I know.
Mr. Posket.
The daughter of a superannuated General, who abstracted four silk umbrellas from the Army and Navy Stores—and on a fine day too!
[Beatie ceases playing.