'The sky isn't always blue, stupid,' answered the father, contemptuously. 'Your bird's nest would be a nice place in stormy weather. You talk like a fool, Justina, with your towers, and nests, and blue skies; and you're getting a young woman now, and ought to have some sense. As for cathedral towns, for my part I've never believed in 'em. Never saw good business for a fortnight on end in a cathedral town. It's all very well for a race week, or you may pull up with a military bespeak, if there's a garrison. But in a general way, as far as the profession goes, your cathedral town is a dead failure.'
'I wasn't thinking of the theatre, father,' said the girl, with a contemptuous shrug of her thin shoulders. 'I hate the theatre, and everything belonging to it.'
'There's a nice young woman, to quarrel with your bread and butter!'
'Bread and ashes, I think, father,' she said, looking downward at the flowers, with a moody face. 'It tastes bitter enough for that.'
'Did ever any one hear of such discontent?' ejaculated the father, lifting his eyes towards the heavens, as if invoking Jove himself as a witness of his child's depravity. 'To go and run down the Pro.! Hasn't the Pro. nourished you and brought you up, and maintained you since you were no higher than that?'
He spread his dingy hand a foot or so above the buttercups to illustrate his remark.
The Pro. of which he spoke with so fond an air was the calling of an actor, and this elderly gentleman, in threadbare raiment, was Mr. Matthew Elgood, a performer of that particular line of dramatic business known in his own circle as 'the first heavies,' or, in less technical phrase, Mr. Elgood was the heavy man—the King in Hamlet, Iago, Friar Lawrence, the Robber Chief of melodrama—the relentless father of the ponderous top-booted and pig-tailed comedy. And Justina Elgood, his seventeen year old daughter, commonly called Judy? Was she Juliet or Desdemona, Ophelia or Imogen? No. Miss Elgood had not yet soared above the humblest drudgery. Her line was general utility, in which she worked with the unrequited patience of an East-end shirtmaker.
'Hasn't the Pro. supported you from the cradle?' growled Mr. Elgood between short, thoughtful puffs at his pipe.
'Had I ever a cradle, father?' the girl demanded, wonderingly. 'If you were always moving about then as you are now, a cradle must have been a great inconvenience.'