Page:Foggerty.djvu/217

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Maxwell and I.
213

vulgarity twice told. Mrs. Talboys was hovering about her daughter in a helpless anxious way, invoking blessings on the comic lady who had taken the affair into her own hands, and who announced her intention of sending them home in her brougham after it had taken her to do her "turn" at the Polyhymnian.

We were not long in making ourselves known to Mrs. Talboys, and eventually to Emmie. She was at first distressed at our having discovered her under such circumstances, but very delighted to see us notwithstanding. We all went home to her poverty-stricken lodgings in the Camberwell Road together, and when there, we gradually told Mrs. Talboys of the good fortune that awaited her.

It would be affectation to pretend that she felt any sorrow for her husband's death, and we spent a couple of hours that night in mapping out the future which was to be invested with such golden surroundings. They had had a hard time of it since they left London; their friends at Chester had procured her a little employment as a teacher in a National School, but poor little Emmie fell ill of scarlet fever, and Mrs. Talboys lost her situation in consequence. She then advertised as a morning governess, and obtained a little work in that capacity; but she was totally unfitted for the charge of children, and that source of income eventually failed her. Then she obtained a little employment as dresser and wardrobe-woman at a provincial theatre, and eventually little Emmie made her appearance on the stage, but the poor timid little girl failed absolutely. For some months they obtained a precarious living by