And he escorted me to the door.
“You think you’ll take this house?” he asked.
“N-n-no! I fancy not.”
“You are right!” said the small old boy approvingly—“It’s only a patched-up concern—just made to look new for the present. In six months all the gloss will be off, and it will appear as just what it is—a badly-built barrack. Good-morning!”
“Good-morning!”
The door closed. I waited a minute, then peered curiously in through the window, and dimly perceived the small old boy seated in solitary state on a kitchen chair in the bleak empty dining-room, patiently studying a book that rested on his knee. I moved away reluctantly at last and with a veritable sensation of awe, feeling that, whatever annoyances I had been subjected to in the way of “care-takers,” I had been repaid at last by my interview with this particular example of the species! For if ambition, perseverance, study, self-reliance and determination count for anything in this world—(and they do go a long way in the furtherance of one’s desires) then I had seen a future “star” of the histrionic firmament. We all know how fond actors are of telling us in after-dinner speeches how they arrived in London ready to take the world by storm with only sixpence in their pockets,—in fact this dramatic sixpence has become quite proverbial, and many a deep-mouthed ranter has alluded to the possession of that humble coin as the grand foundation of all his after career.
“Ladies and gentlemen,”—he will remark in his mellow-throated way—“When I first started in life with only sixpence in my pocket—” and so on. This is the generally accepted and acceptable opening of a truly “telling” mummer’s speech, after a watch or a piece of plate has been presented to him by his admirers.
Now, if I should live another ten years, and at the end of that time, a celebrated actor dear to the fashionable public should make his after-dinner observations thus: “Ladies and gentlemen,—When I first started in life as a ‘care-taker’—” I shall know it is the small old boy, and that I, by happy chance, was privileged to behold in that menial, though rent-and-tax-free position, the successor to the fame of Henry Irving!
