"Why, no. I should have liked it, but we could not at that moment, seeing that we were not in our usual state of independence. This faithful creature was being led before the magistrates, and I too—charge of cheating a cook-maid, to whom the Hag had only said, 'that if the cards spoke true, she would ride in her carriage.' The charge broke down; but we were placed for the night in the Cells of the Inquisition, remanded, and this morning banished from the city, and are now on our way to—any other city;—eh, Hag?"
"And the old man was not with the Phenomenon? What has become of her, then?"
"Perhaps she may be with him at his house, if he has one; only, she was not with him on the Rialto or Cornmarket. She was with him two years ago, I know; and he and she were better off then than he is now, I suspect. And that is why it did me good, sir, to see him a pedlar— a common pedlar—fallen into the sere, like the man he abandoned!"
"Humph—where were they two years ago?"
"At a village not far from Humberston. He had a pretty house, sir, and sold baskets; and the girl was there too, favoured by a great lady—a Marchioness, sir! Gods!"
"Marchioness?—near Humberston? The Marchioness of Montfort, I suppose?"
"Likely enough; I don't remember. All I know is, that two years ago my old Clown was my tyrannical manager; and being in that capacity, and this world being made for Caesar, which is a shame, sir, he said to me, with a sneer, 'Old Gentleman Waife, whom you used to bully, and his Juliet Araminta, are in clover!' And the mocking varlet went on to unfold a tale to the effect, that when he had last visited Humberston, in the race-week, a young tradesman, who was courting the Columbine, whose young idea I myself taught to shoot on the light fantastic toe, treated that Columbine, and one of her sister train (being, indeed, her aunt, who has since come out at the Surrey in Desdemona) to a picnic in a fine park. (That's discipline!—ha, ha!) And there, sir, Columbine and her aunt saw Waife on the other side of a stream by which they sate carousing."
"The Clown perhaps said it to spite you."
"Columbine herself confirmed his tale, and said that on returning to the Village Inn for the Triumphal Car (or bus) which brought them, she asked if a Mr. Waife dwelt thereabouts, and was told, 'Yes, with his grand- daughter.' And she went on asking, till all came out as the Clown reported. And Columbine had not even the gratitude, the justice, to expose that villain—not even to say he had been my perfidious servant! She had the face to tell me 'she thought it might harm him, and he was a kind old soul.' Sir, a Columbine whose toes I had rapped scores of times before they could be turned out, was below contempt! but when my own Clown thus triumphed over me, in parading before my vision the bloated prosperity of mine enemy, it went to my heart like a knife; and we had words on it, sir, and—I left him to his fate. But a pedlar! Gentleman Waife has come to that! The heavens are just, sir, and of our pleasant vices, sir, make instruments that—that—"
"Scourge us," prompted the Hag, severely.