"He can't be, sir: look at the young lady! Besides, the people at No. 12 told me he gave a reference, and paid a week's rent in advance.' 66 He did-did he? I say, are you sure it was a cash-box?' 66 Certain, sir. I suppose it had money in it, of course?" 66 • It "What's the use of a cash-box, without cash? said the Branch Banker, contemptuously. looks rather odd, though! Stop! maybe it's a wager. I've heard of gentlemen doing queer things for wagers. Or, maybe, he's cracked! Well, she's a nice girl; and hanging up this thing can't do any harm. I'll make inquiries about them, though, for all that." Frowning portentously as he uttered this last cautious resolve, Mr. Dunball leisurely returned into the chemist's shop. He was, however, nothing like so ill-natured a man as he imagined himself to be; and, in spite of his dignity and his suspicions, he smiled far more cordially than he at all intended, as he now addressed little Annie Wray. 66 It's out of our line, miss," said he ; "but we'll hang the thing up to oblige you. Of course, if Yes, yes! of I want a reference, you can give it? course. you-a nice prominent place (look at it as you go out)-just between the string of corn-plasters and the dried poppy-heads! I wish Mr. Wray success; though I rather think Tidbury is not quite the sort of place to come to for what you call elocution-eh?" "Thank you, sir; and good morning," said little Annie. And she left the shop just as composedly as she had entered it. "Cool little girl, that!" said Mr. Dunball, watching her progress down the street to No. 12. "Pretty little girl, too!" thought the assistant, trying to watch, like his master, from the window. "I should like to know who Mr. Wray is," said Mr. Dunball, turning back into the shop, as Annie disappeared. "And I'd give something to find out what Mr. Wray keeps in his cash-box," continued the banker-chemist, as he thoughtfully re-entered the mahogany money-chest in the back premises. You are a wise man, Mr. Dunball; but you won't solve those two mysteries in a hurry, sitting alone in that Branch Bank sentry-box of yours! -Can anybody solve them? I can. Who is Mr. Wray? and what has he got in his cash-box ?-Come to No. 12, and see! CHAPTER II. MR. WRAY AND THE BRITISH DRAMA. BEFORE we go boldly into Mr. Wray's lodgings, I must first speak a word or two about him, behind his back-but by no means slanderously. I will take his advertisement, now hanging up in the shop window of Messrs. Dunball and Dark, as the text of my discourse. Mr. Reuben Wray became, as he phrased it, a "pupil of the late celebrated John Kemble, Esquire," in this manner. He began life by being apprenticed for three years to a statuary. Whether the occupation of taking casts and clipping stones proved of too sedentary a nature to suit his temperament, or whether an evil counsellor within him, whose name was VANITY, whispered :— "Seek public admiration, and be certain of public applause," I know not; but the fact is, that, as soon as his time was out, he left his master and his native place to join a company of strolling players; or, as he himself more magniloquently expressed it, he went on the stage. Nature had gifted him with good lungs, large eyes, and a hook nose; his success before barn audiences was consequently brilliant. His professional exertions, it must be owned, barely sufficed to feed and clothe him; but then he had a triumph on the London stage, always present in the far perspective to console him. While waiting this desirable event, he indulged himself in a little intermediate luxury, much in favour as a profitable resource for young men in extreme difficulties-he married; married at the age of nineteen, or thereabouts, the charming Columbine of the company. And he got a good wife. Many people, I know, will refuse to believe this,—it is a truth, nevertheless. The one redeeming success of the vast social failure which his whole existence was doomed to represent, was this very marriage of his with a strolling Columbine. She, poor girl, toiled as hard |