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Updated: May 28, 2025
"Oh, cheese it!" said Tilda. "Oo's a-kiddin' now? An' see 'ere, Arthur Miles it don't matter with me, a lie up or down; I'm on'y Tilda. But don't you pick up the 'abit, or else you'll annoy me. I can't tell why ezactly, but it don't sit on you." "Tilda?" The boy caught up her name like an echo. "Tilda what?" "The Lord knows. Tilda nothin' Tilda o' Maggs's, if you like, an' nobody's child, anyway."
I do believe you 're the child was hurt at Maggs's Circus and taken to hospital." Tilda nodded. "Did you see me?" "Carried by on a stretcher and your face the colour of that." The woman pointed to the marble counter-top. "I was a serious case," said Tilda impressively. "The people at the Good Samaritan couldn' remember admittin' the likes of it. There were complications." "You don't say!"
As I dare say you've been told, the way to get at the essence of a landscape is to half-close your eyes you get the dominant notes that way, and shed the details. Well, I allowed I'd go one better, and see the whole show in motion. Have you ever seen a biograph or a cinematograph, as some call it?" "'Course I 'ave," said Tilda. "There was one in Maggs's Circus."
She was trapped now imprisoned in this horrible house, not to be released until this fictitious aunt arrived, which, of course, would be never. The book on her lap lay open at a coloured lithograph of Mazeppa bound upon his steed and in full flight across the Tartar steppes. She knew the story was it not Mr. Maggs's most thrilling "equestrian finale," and first favourite with the public?
"They told me you was keepin' them here for debt; but that's nonsense, becos they can't never pay it back till you let 'em make money." "A fat lot I shall ever get from Mortimer if I let him out o' my sight. You don't know Mr. Mortimer." "Don't I?" was Tilda's answer. "What d'yer take me for? Why everybody knows what Mr. Mortimer's like everybody in Maggs's, anyway.
"You go away!" said the boy sullenly. "You don't know. If he catches you, there's no chance." Tilda had time in her distress to be astonished by his voice. It was pure, distinct, with the tone of a sphere not hers. Yet she recognised it. She had heard celestial beings ladies and gentlemen in Maggs's three-shilling seats talk in voices like this boy's.
If a body can't do without father an' mother, I'll make up a couple to please you, same as I made up a aunt for Glasson. Maggs's Circus is where I belong to, an' there 'twas Tilda, or 'The Child Acrobat' when they billed me." "You don't look much like an acrobat," commented Mr. Hucks. "Don't I? Well, you needn't to take that on trust, anyway."
" Are kind-'earted by nature. I belongs, ma'am leastways, I did, to Maggs's Circus if you know it " "I've heard Maggs's troupe very well spoken of. But, as you'll understand, I do very little visitin'." "I was 'appy enough with Maggs's, ma'am. But first of all a pony laid me up with a kick, an' then I stole Arthur Miles 'ere out of the 'Oly Innercents "
It was a small boy a boy abominably ragged and with smears of blacking thick on his face, but for all that a good-looking child. Tilda gazed at him, and he gazed back, still without lowering his arm. He was trembling, too. "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" said Tilda, lifting the brim of her chip hat and quoting from one of Mr. Maggs's most effective dramatic sketches.
"But what's become of Maggs's?" "Maggs's left a week ago come Tuesday. I know, because they used to buy their milk of me. They were the first a'most, and the last was the Menagerie and Gavel's Roundabouts. They packed up last night. It must be a wearin' life," commented the shopwoman. "But for my part I like the shows, and so I tell Damper that's my 'usband.
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