VI.

Chronicle for February.

Practice has now given my fair relative the confidence which I predicted would come with time.  Her knack of disguising her own identity in the impersonation of different characters so completely staggers her audiences that the same people come twice over to find out how she does it.  It is the amiable defect of the English public never to know when they have had enough of a good thing.  They actually try to encore one of her characters—­an old north-country lady; modeled on that honored preceptress in the late Mr. Vanstone’s family to whom I presented myself at Combe-Raven.  This particular performance fairly amazes the people.  I don’t wonder at it.  Such an extraordinary assumption of age by a girl of nineteen has never been seen in public before, in the whole course of my theatrical experience.

I find myself writing in a lower tone than usual; I miss my own dash of humor.  The fact is, I am depressed about the future.  In the very height of our prosperity my perverse pupil sticks to her trumpery family quarrel.  I feel myself at the mercy of the first whim in the Vanstone direction which may come into her head—­I, the architect of her fortunes.  Too bad; upon my soul, too bad.

She has acted already on the inquiries which she forced me to make for her.  She has written two letters to Mr. Michael Vanstone.

To the first letter no answer came.  To the second a reply was received.  Her infernal cleverness put an obstacle I had not expected in the way of my intercepting it.  Later in the day, after she had herself opened and read the answer, I laid another trap for her.  It just succeeded, and no more.  I had half a minute to look into the envelope in her absence.  It contained nothing but her own letter returned.  She is not the girl to put up quietly with such an insult as this.  Mischief will come of it—­Mischief to Michael Vanstone—­which is of no earthly consequence:  mischief to Me—­which is a truly serious matter.

VII.

Chronicle for March.

After performing at Sheffield and Manchester, we have moved to Liverpool, Preston, and Lancaster.  Another change in this weathercock of a girl.  She has written no more letters to Michael Vanstone; and she has become as anxious to make money as I am myself.  We are realizing large profits, and we are worked to death.  I don’t like this change in her:  she has a purpose to answer, or she would not show such extraordinary eagerness to fill her purse.  Nothing I can do—­no cooking of accounts; no self-presented testimonials—­can keep that purse empty.  The success of the Entertainment, and her own sharpness in looking after her interests, literally force me into a course of comparative honesty.  She puts into her pocket more than a third of the profits, in defiance of my most arduous exertions to prevent her.  And this at my age! this after my long and successful career as a moral agriculturist!  Marks of admiration are very little things; but they express my feelings, and I put them in freely.