"Go home, my dear," he said, "and practise it with your husband."
What a situation for one who has been a queen of society. When Mrs. Charmington, almost heart-broken, reached her lodgings she informed her husband that it was more than she could bear.
"The idea of the wretch actually teaching me my business before my whole company, and then ordering me to go home and learn to 'clutch and nestle.'"
"Dev'lish sensible idea I think, Julia," said Charmington, who was in love with his wife before all things; "you can't do better than begin at once," and the little man drew himself up to his full height of five foot six and extended his arms like a mechanical doll.
"Don't remind me of my humiliation, Jack; it's too much, too much to bear," and the beauty flung herself into an easy chair and burst into floods of tears.
But Julia Charmington, wise woman that she was, did as she was bid; she clutched and she nestled all that afternoon, and she had her reward. For six whole months she delighted all the great provincial towns and watering-places of the United Kingdom with "Ethel's Sacrifice," and she reaped a golden harvest. When she came to town for the season she scored a decided success, and all the leading Dailies joined in the chorus of adulation. The fair Julia got a good round sum from the photographers for the right to represent her in her four elaborate costumes; the particular triumph of the sun-artist being the representation of her nestling and clutching scene. Even the dramatic critic of the great morning journal went into ecstasies over this.
"Mrs. Charmington," he said, "has made real progress. It has been the fashion to go to see this lady from curiosity, but last night she scored a genuine success in 'Ethel's Sacrifice,' a thrilling melodrama by Messrs. Breitmann and Robinson, which was seen in London for the first time. The house was crowded with the well-known faces so familiar to us at all important premières. In her great scene in the third act, Mrs. Charmington took every one by surprise. Thoroughly spontaneous and unaffected, quite free from staginess and straining after effect, the audience thoroughly appreciated the genuine burst of feeling of the young wife," and so on, and so on, for a column and a half.
Messrs. Breitmann and Robinson bowed their thanks to an enthusiastic call; and Breitmann, his face wreathed in smiles and cracking his fingers violently, as was his custom, whispered to his collaborator, "She's only a 'mug,' after all, my boy, but I'm proud of her; it's the nestling and clutching that fetched them." And then he went off to the Convivial Cannibals, where he ate an enormous tripe supper, and was more jovial and violent than ever.
