and unprotected condition. Morgiana had not latterly seen much of
the old people; how could she, moving in her exalted sphere, receive
at her genteel new residence in the Edgware Road the old publican
and his wife?

Being, then, alone in the world, Mrs. Crump could not abear, she
said, to live in the house where she had been so respected and
happy: so she sold the goodwill of the "Bootjack," and, with the
money arising from this sale and her own private fortune, being able
to muster some sixty pounds per annum, retired to the neighbourhood
of her dear old "Sadler's Wells," where she boarded with one of Mrs.
Serle's forty pupils. Her heart was broken, she said; but,
nevertheless, about nine months after Mr. Crump's death, the
wallflowers, nasturtiums, polyanthuses, and convolvuluses began to
blossom under her bonnet as usual; in a year she was dressed quite
as fine as ever, and now never missed "The Wells," or some other
place of entertainment, one single night, but was as regular as the
box-keeper. Nay, she was a buxom widow still, and an old flame of
hers, Fisk, so celebrated as pantaloon in Grimaldi's time, but now
doing the "heavy fathers" at "The Wells," proposed to her to
exchange her name for his.

But this proposal the worthy widow declined altogether. To say
truth, she was exceedingly proud of her daughter, Mrs. Captain
Walker. They did not see each other much at first; but every now
and then Mrs. Crump would pay a visit to the folks in Connaught
Square; and on the days when "the Captain's" lady called in the City
Road, there was not a single official at "The Wells," from the first
tragedian down to the call-boy, who was not made aware of the fact.