“I shall have occupied this position some three months to-morrow,” said the small old boy with a certain stateliness of manner—“But I think of resigning it shortly to my mother. I’m rather tired of it myself, though it has served me well for reading purposes.”
“For reading purposes!” I looked at him wonderingly,—he was so meagre and wan and worn and ancient of aspect.
“You see,” he went on placidly—“you want quiet when you are studying for anything. And it’s very quiet here. As they say in Hamlet, ‘not a mouse stirring.’”
“Ah! you read Shakespeare then?”
“I learn the various parts in the principal plays,” he replied with dignity—“I am going to be an actor.”
“Indeed!” I did my best not to laugh,—the small old boy was so earnest and solemn.
“I have calculated,” he said, “that in from eight to ten years Henry Irving will be, as they say, on his last legs. I shall be twenty-four, and shall have played any small parts I can get in the provinces till then. I shall save all the money I can, and live as the Greek philosophers lived, on simple food,—and when I am about thirty-two I shall take the Lyceum or Her Majesty’s. That is my plan.”
“A very ambitious one!” I observed—“Plans are not always realized, you know!”
The small old boy smiled a superior smile.
“Not unless one is determined to realize them,” he said with singular emphasis—“Then things arrange themselves somehow. I am quite certain of my game!”