A fortnight passed away. Chops was still staying with Crona and her pets. His bedroom was a very sweet little room, and it looked right away over the wide, heathy moor, where so often he had wandered with Lotty and Wallace. Ah, but Wallace was here his constant companion, and often the poor dog listened and seemed to know what Chops said when he told him that before very long they would both go and see Lotty herself, and be happy as the day is long.
About the same time, moreover, at a tiny but pretty village by the sea, on the south-west coast of England, a little unpretentious show was opened, and hither had you wandered, reader, you would have met more than one acquaintance: Mary, Skeleton, Bruin, the dooroocoolie, and even Biffins Lee himself.
How are the mighty fallen! Well, it is true that the showman had come down a bit in the world, and that the establishment could no longer be called the Queerest Show on Earth in the absence of those two most valuable properties, Lotty and Chops. Still, there was no visible difference in Biffins. He had neither lost his voice nor his pomposity, which would have been a pity—for Biffins Lee. He had sly ways of doing things, and he managed to have it believed by the fishermen and rustic population that he had run through a vast fortune, if not two, and had lately lost valuable property. The latter part of the story was true enough, but it was stage 'property.' However, he had set the ball a-rolling. They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. Well, that depends upon what the stone is. For instance, the boy or girl who has a living to make, if not possessed of staying-power and steadfastness, will never become honoured and rich—never, never, never, as Lotty would say. On the other hand:
Men's evil manners live in brass,
Their virtues we write in water.
No matter how good and generous one is in this world, nor how much good he or she does, people will be ungrateful. But set the stone of gossip or scandal a-rolling, and see if it doesn't gather moss. From being a man who had sustained severe losses, Biffins Lee was soon exalted to the dignity of a nobleman in disguise only amusing himself with keeping a show until such time as he could arise in all his strength and glory to sweep from its false foundation one of the highest aristocratic families in Britain.
'You might see by his looks,' said one female gossip to another, as they stood by the village well, 'that he is something above the common.'
'Ay, indeed, Mr Lee looks a duke in disguise at the very least,' quoth her crony.
So Biffins Lee's show began to look up again, and he managed to secure varieties every fortnight.
. . . . . . .
Lotty's new home in Highgate Heath was an ideal little place—for a London suburb, that is. There was nothing of the romance of the forest and moor about it, and the gipsy lass may have missed the glamour of the sea. There was a charming morsel of a garden that now in the sweet summer days was very pretty, and full of choice flowers. The forest was represented by two tall trees, which, as London smoke swept over even Highgate Heath, always wept wet soot after rain, and the ocean was a great stone saucer in which goldfish swam. But there was the nattiest morsel of a summer-house imaginable, all surrounded with honeysuckle and roses.