annihilating Quin he had just used the snuff weapon, and now he drew his
spy-glass upon poor Peggy.

"Whom have we here?" said he. Then he looked with his spy-glass to see.
Oh, the little Irish orange-girl!"

"Whose basket outweighed Colley Cibber's salary for the first twenty
years of his dramatic career," was the delicate reply to the above
delicate remark. It staggered him for a moment; however, he affected a
most puzzled air, then gradually allowed a light to steal into his
features.

"Eh! ah! oh! how stupid I am; I understand; you sold something besides
oranges!"

"Oh!" said Mr. Vane, and colored up to the temples, and cast a look on
Cibber, as much as to say, "If you were not seventy-three!"

His ejaculation was something so different from any tone any other person
there present could have uttered that the actress's eye dwelt on him for
a single moment, and in that moment he felt himself looked through and
through.

"I sold the young fops a bargain, you mean," was her calm reply; "and now
I am come down to the old ones. A truce, Mr. Cibber, what do you
understand by an actor? Tell me; for I am foolish enough to respect your
opinion on these matters!"

"An actor, young lady," said he, gravely, "is an artist who has gone deep
enough in his art to make dunces, critics and greenhorns take it for