Part 30 (1/2)
”Now I know what she's a-lookin' for; it's the byeby.”
”Where is it?” said Glory.
”Gorn, my dear.”
”Surely you don't mean----”
”No, not dead, but I 'ad to put it out, pore thing!”
”Ye see, miss,” said Mr. Jupe with his mouth full, ”my missus couldn't nurse the byeby and 'tend to the biziniss as well, so as reason was----”
”It brikes my 'eart to think it; but it made such a n'ise, pore darling!”
”Does the mother know?” said Glory.
”That wasn't necessary, my dear. It's gorn to a pusson I can trust to tyke keer of it, and I'm trooly thenkful----”
”It jest amarnts to this, miss: the biziness is too much for the missus as things is----”
”I wouldn't keer if my 'ealth was what it used to be, in the dyes when I 'ad b.o.o.boo.”
”But it ain't, and she's often said as how she'd like a young laidy to live with her and 'elp her with the shop.”
”A nice-lookin' girl might 'ave a-many chawnces in a place syme as this, my dear.”
”Lawd, yus; and when I seen the young laidy come in at the door, 'Strike me lucky!' thinks I, 'the very one!'”
”Syme 'ere, my dear. I reckkernized ye the minute I seen ye; and if ye want to leave the hospital and myke a stawt, as you were saying--last night----”
Glory stopped them. They were on the wrong trace entirely. She had merely come to lodge with them, and if that was not agreeable----
”Well, and so ye sh.e.l.l, my dear; and if ye don't like the shop all at onct, there's b.o.o.boo, she wants lessons----”
”But I can pay,” said Glory, and then she was compelled to say something of her plans. She wanted to become a singer, perhaps an actress, and to tell them the truth she might not be staying long, for when she got engagements----
”Jest as you like, my dear; myke yerself at 'ome. On'y don't be in a 'urry about engygements. Good ones ain't tots picked up by the childring in the streets these dyes.”
Nevertheless it was agreed that Glory was to lodge at the tobacconist's, and Mr. Jupe was to bring her box from the hospital on coming home that night from his work. She was to pay ten s.h.i.+llings a week, all told, so that her money would last four or five weeks, and leave something to spare. ”But I shall be earning long before that,” she thought, and her resources seemed boundless. She started on her enterprise instantly, knowing no more of how to begin than that it would first be necessary to find the office of an agent. Mr. Jupe remembered one such place.
”It's in a street off of Waterloo Road,” he said, ”and the name on the windows is Josephs.”
Glory found this person in a fur-lined coat and an opera hat, sitting in a room which was papered with photographs, chiefly of the nude and the semi-nude, intermingled with sheafs of playbills that hung from the walls like ballads, from the board of the balladmonger.
”Vell, vot's yer line?” he asked.
Glory answered nervously and indefinitely.
”Vot can you do then?”
She could sing and recite and imitate people.
The man shrugged his shoulders. ”My terms are two guineas down and ten per cent on salary.”