PEG WOFFINGTON

By Charles Reade

ABOUT

CHAPTER I

BOUT the middle of last century, at eight o'clock in the evening, in a large, but poor, apartment, a man was slumbering on a rough couch. His rusty and worn suit of black was of a piece with his uncarpeted room, the deal table of home manufacture, and its slim, unsnuffed candle.

The man was Triplet, scene-painter, actor and writer of sanguinary plays, in which what ought to be, viz., truth, plot, situation and dialogue were not; and what ought not to be, and were: scilicet, small talk, big talk, fops, ruffians, and ghosts.

His three mediocrities fell so short of one talent, that he was sometimes impransus.

He slumbered, but uneasily; the dramatic author was uppermost, and his "Demon of the Hayloft" hung upon the thread of popular favour.

On his uneasy slumber entered, from the theatre, Mrs. Triplet.

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She was a lady who in one respect fell behind her husband, she lacked his variety in ill-doing; but she recovered herself by doing her one thing a shade worse than he did any of his three. She was what is called, in grim sport, an actress; she had just cast her mite