“And yet he is proud of you, and, by my faith, he has some reason to be so. Was it not he made you an actor?”
“He! Mr. Johnson? oh, Lord, he never ceased to inculcate upon us a just hatred and contempt of all that appertains to the stage.”
“Ay, and that was the means of making you thoroughly interested in all that appertains to the stage, my friend. But I hold as I have always held, that Mr. Johnson gave you first chance.
“What sophistry is this that you have seized upon, my dear? My first chance?”
“Yes, sir; I hold that your first and, I doubt not, your greatest, success as an actor, was your imitation for the good of your schoolfellows, of the mighty love passages between your good preceptor and that painted piece of crockery who had led him to marry her, that was old enough—ay, and nearly plain enough—to be his mother. What did he call her?—his Tiffy?—his Taffy?”
“Nay, only his Tessy, The lady's name was Elizabeth, you must know.”
“Call her Saint Elizabeth, Davy—your patron saint, for, by the Lord Harry, you would never have thought of coming on the stage if it had not been for the applause you won when you returned to the schoolroom after peeping through the door of the room where your schoolmaster chased his Tessy into a corner for a kiss! Davy, 't is your finest part still. If you and I were to act it, with a prologue written by Mr. Johnson, it would draw all the town.”
“I doubt it not; but it would likewise draw down upon me the wrath of Mr. Johnson; and that is not to be lightly faced. But we have strayed from our text, Margaret.”
“Our text? I have forgotten that there was some preaching being done. But all texts are but pretexts for straying, uttered in the hearing of the strayed. What is your text, Davy?”
“The text is the actress without the heart, Margaret, and the evil that she doeth to the writer of the tragedy, to the man who hath a lease of the playhouse, and above all to her sister actress, Mistress Woffington.”