He was too much excited by his triumph to notice that the child, as she walked after him, looked wistfully to the last in the direction by which Valentine had gone out.
"The public like excitement," soliloquized Mr.Jubber, as he disappeared behind the red curtain.

"I must have all this in the bills to-morrow.
It's safe to draw at least thirty shillings extra into the house at night." In the meantime, Valentine, after some blundering at wrong doors, at last found his way out of the circus, and stood alone on the cool grass, in the cloudless autumn moonlight.

He struck his stick violently on the ground, which at that moment represented to him the head of Mr.Jubber; and was about to return straight to the rectory, when he heard a breathless voice behind him, calling:--"Stop, sir! oh, do please stop for one minute!" He turned round.

A buxom woman in a tawdry and tattered gown was running towards him as fast as her natural impediments to quick progression would permit.
"Please, sir," she cried--"Please, sir, wasn't you the gentleman that was taken queer at seeing our little Foundling?
I was peeping through the red curtain, sir, just at the time." Instead of answering the question, Valentine instantly began to rhapsodize about the child's face.
"Oh, sir! if you know anything about her," interposed the woman, "for God's sake don't scruple to tell it to me! I'm only Mrs.Peckover, sir, the wife of Jemmy Peckover, the clown, that you saw in the circus to-night.

But I took and nursed the little thing by her poor mother's own wish; and ever since that time--" "My dear, good soul," said Mr.Blyth, "I know nothing of the poor little creature.