Its’ a nice day to choose to write a letter to any one but there you won’t get it till April 2nd so you won’t think any one’s sending you a live mouse or any silly joke like that. Well, here we are as well as we can be thank God—Letitsha is in the pink there’s no doubt about it and so am I but this is not what I am writing about. Last week we had the Lights of Home company at the Royal and Mr. Plimmer who was acting in it was lodging with me and this week they finished and he’s staying on with me because he says he’s never been so comfortable in his life but he’s took a great fancy to Letitchia and that’s a fact—He raves about her and I won’t say I’m surprised because she’s been on the Top of her Form and making us all laugh fit to Bust. Mrs. B. says she’s laughed a lot in her life and which is a fact but she don’t think she ever laughed so much as what she has this week. She split her stays one afternoon—They went off like a Cannon—Talk about a royal Salute—And Mr. Plimmer says she’s a born actress and ought to be on the boards without delay—well, he’s taking out a company himself in a drama he’s written something after the stile of East Lynne well about the same as far as I can see only a bit more East in it from what I can make out and he wants Letissia for the child and you for the Mother. He’ll write plenty of stuff for her because he says She’ll Knock Them. Well, I’m bound to say I think she will and Mrs. B’s convinsed of it: So I gave him your address and he’s going to pop up to London to-morrow if you’ll make arrangements to be in I’ve given him your address. What a voice that Kid has he said to me Mrs. Pottage. Good God it would reach to the back row of the gallery in any theatre. Well I hope this’ll be the end of all your troubles and which I think it will dearie—
Letitsia sends her love and so do I and I hope this is an end of all your worries even if it is April Fools Day. Mrs. B. sends all the best and so do I.
Your loving old
Johanna Pottage.
Here was a most unmistakable turning out of this long lane, Nancy thought, a turning at so sharp an angle that the prospect of taking it alarmed her imagination, so far did it seem likely to lead Letizia and herself away from the direction in which Bram and she had been travelling together. Nancy’s mind went back to her own appearance at the age of six in Green Bushes. Her mother was no longer alive to witness that first performance of a squeaky-voiced little boy in the old-fashioned melodrama, of which she could remember nothing except the hazy picture of the heroine dressed in a Fenimore Cooper get-up as she came running down the bank, gun in hand. Her father had made arrangements for her to live with the baggage man and his wife during that tour. She had liked Mr. Ballard, a big fat man with a very much waxed moustache, but little Mrs. Ballard with her cold hooked nose, pink and half-transparent at the tip, had been antipathetic. She could see her now sighing and sewing all day. If Letizia did go on the stage as a child, she should not act away from her mother at any rate. It would always have to be a joint engagement.
Maudie interrupted Nancy’s pictures of the past by coming up to say that a gentleman was down in the shop and wanted to see her.
“I didn’t know if you’d have liked me to have brought him up here, Miss O’Finn? I hope I done right in asking him to wait a minute in the shop?”
“Good gracious, yes, Maudie! He couldn’t come up here. I’ll be down very soon.”
Nancy looked at the card: Rodney Plimmer. “Custody of the Child” Company. Evidently that was the play he was presently going to take out on tour. Nancy put on her hat and coat, for if she was going to talk business with Mr. Plimmer they would certainly have to talk elsewhere than in Unicorn Street.
The actor was turning over the pages of one of Mrs. Askin’s tattered folios when she came down into the shop.
“Now don’t tell me you’ve got another appointment, Miss O’Finn,” he said. “I’ve been hoping you would come out to lunch with me.”