As a business man Mr. Filley read the paper, but not the local papers of ’Quawket, for it was seldom that the papers were local there long enough to get anybody into the habit of reading them. Thus it came about that he failed to see the notice of the death of old Mrs. Filley, which occurred in the Old Ladies’ Home something less than a twelve-month after the date of his first and only visit. The death occurred, however, but the reports kept on coming in the same fine Italian hand, and with the same generous freedom in language of the most expensive sort. No man could have got more report for fifty dollars than Mr. Filley got, and the report did not begin to be the most of what he was getting.
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Sometimes clergymen but slightly acquainted with the theatrical business are surprised when traveling through small towns to see lithographs and posters displaying the features of great stars of the theatrical and operatic world, who are billed to appear in some local opera house about two sizes larger than a cigar-box. The portraits are familiar, the names under them are not; you may recognize the features of Joe Jefferson and Adelina Patti, with labels on them establishing their identity as “Comical Maginnis, the Monkey Mugger,” and “Sadie Sylvester, the Society Clog Artiste.” These are what are known as “Stock-printing,” and it is pleasant to reflect that the printers who get them up for a fraud on the public rarely are able to collect their bills from the actors and actresses that use them, and that the audiences that go to such shows don’t know the difference between Adelina Patti and an oyster patty.
This explanation of an interesting custom is made to forestall the reader’s surprise at learning that two years and a half after her retirement from the stage, and ten years, at least, after the retirement of such of her youthful charms as might have justified the exhibition, the portrait of Mrs. Fortescue, arrayed in silk tights, of a most constricted pattern—not constrained at all, simply constricted—decorated scores of fences in what theatrical people call the “’Quawket Circuit,” which circuit includes the charming and presumably salubrious shades of Tophill. There was no mistaking Mrs. Fortescue’s face; Mrs. Fortescue’s attire might have given rise to almost any sort of mistake. The name under the picture was not that of Mrs. Fortescue; it was that of a much advertised young person whose “dramatic speciality” was entitled “Too Much for London; or, Oh, My! Did you Ever!”
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Now it is necessary to disinter old Mrs. Filley for a moment, and to smirch her character a little by way of introducing some excuse for what Mrs. Fortescue did.
By the time Mrs. Fortescue had cooked her third report, she had found out that the old lady had not quite kept faith with her employer. At the Tophill Institute she had represented herself as Mr. Filley’s mother, gaining thereby much consideration and many cups of tea. So that when she died, with the rest of her secret hidden from all but Mrs. Fortescue, the latter lady, having fully made up her mind to appropriate the job, felt that it behooved her to go her predecessor one better, and when she made her appearance at Tophill it was in the character of Mr. Filley’s newly married wife. She told the sympathetic all about it, how Mr. Filley and she had known each other from childhood, how he had always loved her, how she had wedded another to please her family, how the other had died, and Mr. Filley had renewed his addresses, how she had staved him off (I am not quoting her language) until his dear old mother had died, and left him so helpless and lonely that she really had to take pity on him. Mrs. Filley No. 2 got all the consideration she wanted, and the principal sent out for champagne for her, under the impression that that was the daily and hourly drink in all millionaire families. He never found out otherwise from Mrs. Filley, either.
Probably Mrs. Fortescue-Filley had calculated on keeping up her pretty career of imposture until her time of probation at the Home was up, and she could withdraw her entrance fee and vanish at once from ’Quawket and Tophill. She had the report business well in hand; her employer occasionally wrote her for detailed information on minor points of the child’s work or personal needs, but in general expressed himself perfectly satisfied; and she felt quite safe, so far as he was concerned, when he commissioned her to put the child through an all-round examination, and sent her fifty dollars extra with his “highest compliments” on her manner of doing it. Indeed, in this she was no humbug. She could have put the principal, himself, through his scholastic facings if she had cared to.