"But she'll be asleep, the darling!" exclaimed the mother.
"All the better," was the answer. "She'll have nothing to say. You play in the piece. Now attend to my instructions;" and he forthwith gave them to her.
In the drama, the mother, who really played the part of a mother, had to sit at a table for five or six minutes sewing, and speaking perhaps a dozen words, while the action of the piece was being carried on by two characters who occupied the front of the stage. Mr. Hart, in this scene, placed the cradle on the stage, with the baby in it. When the mother went to her seat at the table, she took the baby from the cradle on to her lap.
"Why, it's a real baby!" cried the gold-diggers, and a buzz of delight ran through the house.
Suddenly the baby awoke, opened her eyes and stared with all her might at the audience, whose attention was now entirely fixed upon the movements of the pretty little thing. The mother raised her to her feet on her lap, and the child, pleased with the light and glitter of the scene, clapped her little hands--one of her pretty tricks--while her face broke out into smiles and dimples. This was enough for the gold-diggers; they laughed, they clapped their hands, they applauded, they cried:
"Bravo, young un! Bravo!"
As though the baby had performed the most marvellous feats; and when the mother, carried away by her feelings, tossed her baby in the air, who fell into her arms crowing and laughing, this little touch of nature roused the audience to a pitch of the wildest enthusiasm. They called for three cheers for the baby, and three for the mother, and three more on the top of those, and some of the men left money at the bars of the Rose, Shamrock, and Thistle, to buy sweets and cakes for the youngster.
"A great success," remarked Mr. Hart; "no one can say now that she is not entitled to her share. It will be as well to repeat baby every evening until further notice. We will make a feature of baby. She will draw."
Baby did "draw," and the performances went on bravely. Full houses every night. At the end of the week, after paying expenses, there were nearly six hundred pounds to divide. The money was shared on the Saturday night, after the performance. Mr. Hart, with his share tightly clasped in his hand walked into his bedroom and locked the door. Then he lit a candle, and out of a small trunk took a little packet of letters and a portrait. He knelt by the bed, and read the letters with slow delight; they were short, and the earlier ones were written in a large straggling hand. He opened the portrait-case, and gazed lovingly on the picture of a beautiful girl; a child, with laughing hazel eyes and light curls. He kissed it again and again; and taking from his share of the money he had received a sum barely sufficient for his necessities, he deposited the balance in a safe corner of the trunk.
"For you, my darling, for you," he murmured, speaking to the pretty picture before him. "God preserve and bless you, and make your life happy!"