'That's right, Master Christopher. We'll be friends, you and me. Well, but to come back.' (This was evidently one of her favourite figures of speech.) got two pound five a week for playing the old witch; it lasted for twenty-two weeks, and it was almost the death of me. I had to do it though.'
'Why?'
Her voice grew quieter and she spoke in subdued tones, so that the little misses should not hear.
'Mother and father died within a month of each other, and there were the doctor's bills and the funeral expenses to be provided for. Then there's a large family of us, Master Christopher, and taking us altogether in a lump, we're no joke. The boys wouldn't hear of my going on the stage again, and I don't see myself how I could do it regularly, for there's a deal of business to look after indoors, letting alone the household affairs. Though I like it! If anybody--that is, anybody who's somebody--would write me a strong one-part piece, I could make a big hit with my figure. 'Tisn't every day you see such a figure as mine; it's worth a mint of money on the stage if it was properly worked. They're all on the stage but me; little Sophy there--she's the youngest, four years--spoke two lines in the pantomime last year to rounds of applause. The people love to see a clever child on the stage, though the papers write against it. But what are the papers? as Turk says, with a glare.'
'Of course,' I repeated, with a foolish air of wisdom, 'what are the papers?'
'Turk says, if they were what they ought to be, somebody that he knows (that's himself, my dear) would be at the top of the tree.'
'Turk is very clever, then?'
He's the best murderer to slow music that I've ever seen. But Gus is the genius of the family. In the matter of that, we're all geniuses. But blighted, my dear, blighted!'
She gave me the merriest look, as little like a blighted being as can well be imagined.
'We're all of us very conceited, my dear, and very vain. What was that thing in the fable that tried to blow itself out, and came to grief?'