“What is the matter? What is the matter? Why are they crying that way on her?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Why, don’t you see they’re mad!” said Mrs Molyneux.
“Oh, dear! and I thought she was doing splendidly.”
“Glad mad, I mean. She has carried them off their feet, and I’ll bet Jim Molyneux is standing on his hands behind that drop and waving his legs in the air. Guess I needn’t waste this bouquet on a girl who looks like the morning hour in Covent Garden.”
Molyneux burst into the box in a gust of wild excitement. “Come round, come round at once—she wants to see you,” he exclaimed, and led them deviously behind the scenes to her dressing-room.
She stood at the door, softly crying; she looked at them—the grave old uncle; Ailie who could understand, the little Auntie Bell,—it was into the arms of Bell she threw herself!
“THE talk of the whole of London! The beauteous Lady Anne herself’s not in it with her!” said Will Oliver, scratching behind his ears. “Man, is it no’ just desperate? But I’ll warrant ye there’s money in it, for it’s yonder folk are willing to pay well for their diversion.”
“Are you sure,” said P. & A., “it’s not another woman altogether? It gives the name of Wallace in the paper.”
The bellman, sitting on a soap-box, slapped his thigh and said, “I’m telling ye; I had it long ago from Kate MacNeill that her name on the stage was going to be Wallace—Winifred Wallace, and there it is in print. Tra—tragedienny, tragediennys are the head ones in the trade: I’ve seen them in the shows—tr-r-r-emendous women!”
The Provost, who had just stepped into P. & A.’s for his Sunday sweeties, smiled tolerantly and passed his taddy-box. “Bud Dyce,” said he, “is never likely to be round this way in a caravan to do the deid-drap three times every night for front-seats sixpence. I doubt we have seen the last of her, unless we have the money and the clothes for London theatres.”
“It’s really her, then?” said the grocer.
“You can take Wull’s word for that,” said the Provost, “and I have just been talking to her uncle. Her history’s in the morning paper, and I’m the civic head of a town renowned for genius.”
Wanton Wully went out to drift along the street in the light of the bright shop-windows before which bairns played “chaps me,” making choice of treasures for their gaudiness alone, like most of us, who should know better. He met George Jordon. “Geordie,” said he, “you’ll have heard the latest? You should be in London: yon’s the place for oddity,” and George, with misty comprehension, turned about for the road to London town. Out of the inn came Colin Cleland, hurried, in his hand the business-looking packet of tattered documents that were always his excuse for being there.