“‘I know a spot on which a bed-post grows, And do remember where a roper lives.’ Delightful prospect, not to be indulged; for if I were in peace at one end of the rope, what would chance to my Sophy, left forlorn at the other?” “Don’t talk so, or I shall think you are sorry to have taken care of me.” “Care of thee, oh, child! and what care? It is thou who takest care of me. Put thy hands from thy mouth; sit down, darling, there, opposite, and let us talk. Now, Sophy, thou hast often said that thou wouldst be glad to be out of this mode of life, even for one humbler and harder: think well, is it so?” “Oh, yes, indeed, grandfather.” “No more tinsel dresses and flowery wreaths; no more applause; no more of the dear divine stage excitement; the heroine and fairy vanished; only a little commonplace child in dingy gingham, with a purblind cripple for thy sole charge and playmate; Juliet Araminta evaporated evermore into little Sophy!” “It would be so nice!” answered little Sophy, laughing merrily. “What would make it nice?” asked the Comedian, turning on her his solitary piercing eye, with curious interest in his gaze. Sophy left her seat, and placed herself on a stool at her grandfather’s knee; on that knee she clasped her tiny hands, and shaking aside her curls, looked into his face with confident fondness. Evidently these two were much more than grandfather and grandchild: they were friends, they were equals, they were in the habit of consulting and prattling with each other. She got at his meaning, however covert his humour; and he to the core of her heart, through its careless babble. Between you and me, Reader, I suspect that, in spite of the Comedian’s sagacious wrinkles, the one was as much a child as the other. “Well,” said Sophy, “I will tell you, Grandy, what would make it nice: no one would vex and affront you,--we should be all by ourselves; and then, instead of those nasty lamps and those dreadful painted creatures, we could go out and play in the fields and gather daisies; and I could run after butterflies, and when I am tired I should come here, where I am now, any time of the day, and you would tell me stories and pretty verses, and teach me to write a little better than I do now, and make such a wise little woman of me; and if I wore gingham--but it need not be dingy, Grandy--it would be all mine, and you would be all mine too, and we’d keep a bird, and you’d teach it to sing; and oh, would it not be nice!” “But still, Sophy, we should have to live, and we could not live upon daisies and butterflies. And I can’t work now; for the matter of that, I never could work: more shame for me, but so it is. Merle says the fault is in the stars,--with all my heart. But the stars will not go to the jail or the workhouse instead of me. And though they want nothing to eat, we do.”