‘It’s on the cards for her to do better, of course,’ reflected Mr. Elgood; ‘actresses have married into the peerage before to-day, and no end of them have married bankers and heavy mercantile swells. But, after all, Justina isn’t the kind of beauty to take the world by storm; and this success of hers may be only a flash in the pan. I haven’t much confidence in the duration of this blessed new school of acting, these drawing-room comedies, with their how-d’ye-do, and won’t-you-take-a-chair dialogue. The good old heavy five-act drama will have its turn by and by, when the public is tired of this milk and water. And Justina has hardly physique enough for the five-act drama. It might be a good thing to get her comfortably married if I was quite clear about my own position.’ That was an all-important question. Justina single and on the stage meant, at a minimum, six guineas a week at Mr. Elgood’s disposal. The girl handed her salary over to the paternal exchequer without a question, and was grateful for an occasional pound or two towards the replenishment of her scanty wardrobe. Mr. Elgood lost no time in trying to arrive at Maurice’s ideas upon this subject. ‘It’s a hard thing for a man when he outlives his generation,’ he remarked, plaintively, one Sunday evening when Maurice had dropped in and found the comedian alone, Justina not having yet returned from evening service at St. Pancras. ‘Here am I, in the prime of life, with all my faculties in their full vigour, laid up in port, as useless a creature as if I were a sheer hulk, like poor Tom Bowling—actually dependent upon the industry of a girl! There’s something degrading in the idea. If it were not for Justina, I’d accept an engagement for the heavies at the lowest slum in London, roar my vitals out in three pieces a night, rather than eat the bread of dependence. But Justina won’t have it. “I want you to bring me home from the theatre of a night, father,” she says. And that’s an argument I can’t resist. The streets of London are no place for unprotected innocence after dark, and cabs are an expensive luxury. Yet it’s a bitter thing to consider that if Justina were to marry I should have to go to the workhouse.’ ‘Hardly, if she married an honest man, Mr. Elgood,’ replied Maurice. ‘No honest man would take your daughter away from you without making some provision for your future.’ ‘Well, I _have_ looked at it in that light,’ said Matthew, reflectively, as if the question had thus dimly presented itself before him. ‘I think an honest man wouldn’t feel it quite the right thing to take away my bread-winner, and leave me to spend my declining days in want and misery. Yet, as Shakespeare has it, “Age is unnecessary.” “Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.” “_To have done_ is to hang— “Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail, In monumental mockery.”’