“But if I take off my shoes and stockings and pull up my skirts they’ll think the British Museum’s broken loose,” said Mrs. Pottage. “You haven’t seen my legs, duckie. Talk about marble columns. Well, my legs would make a marble column look like a knitting-needle. Besides, supposing I got my toe bit off by a kipper?”
The next morning, armed with several baskets of strawberries and a large green-lined gingham umbrella, Mrs. Pottage set out with Nancy and Letizia to savour the delights of Margate beach.
“Fine weather for a sail, mum,” said one of the longshoremen.
“Yes, but you’d be the one that was sold,” Mrs. Pottage retorted.
“Nice day for a row, mum,” suggested another longshoreman. “A shilling the first hour, and sixpence every hour afterwards.”
“Who do you think I am?” Mrs. Pottage demanded. “Grace Darling? No, thanks, young man, I’d sooner spend the money on winkles.”
It was such a jolly week at Margate. Although Mrs. Pottage was never lured into a boat, she was persuaded by Letizia into paddling; and when she found herself with the water round her knees she was so much amused by the ridiculous sight she must be making of herself that she became as helpless with laughter as her friend Mrs. Bugbird did and sat down with such a tremendous splash that every child on the beach came running in her direction at the rumour that an elderly woman had been seized by a ferocious shark. Letizia was so much amused by the spectacle of Mrs. Pottage sitting down in the sea and remaining there helpless with laughter that she sat down herself, whereupon several other little girls and boys followed her example, to the consternation of their nurses who had to fling down their novelettes and hurry to the rescue. Yes, it was a jolly week at Margate, a week of sitting on the sun-baked sands and eating strawberries, of paddling and visiting the camera obscura, of listening to Negroes and Pierrots, of digging castles and buying shrimps for tea, of exploring the mysterious marine underworld of the pier, of wild rides on donkeys and sedate drives in goat-carriages, of sweets and paper-bags and asphalt promenades. But it came to an end very quickly. Mrs. Pottage went back to Greenwich. Letizia went back to the convent. Nancy went on tour again to play the adventuress in another melodrama.
And for another two years she played adventuresses, rustling her silk petticoats, hissing defiance through her clenched teeth, and smoking with amazing effrontery the cigarettes that in those days indicated on the stage a woman dead to shame. Nor did she catch more than an occasional glimpse of Letizia during that time, because she managed to fill up the summers of both 1897 and 1898 by acting in stock seasons at northern theatres, where for one week during the illness of the leading lady she had an opportunity of showing what she could do with parts like Rosalind, Viola, and Lady Teazle. But the next week she was playing the colourless Celia, the tiresome Olivia, and the prototype of the modern adventuress, Lady Sneerwell. Yet even these parts only lasted for the two reputed fine months of the year. By the middle of July she was once more immersed in monotonous villainy, measuring her success not by the applause but by the groans and hisses of the unsophisticated audiences for whose entertainment she kept the hero and the heroine apart until the very end of the fifth act. Her salary was still four pounds a week; but every week she was still able to save half. There was over £200 for Letizia in the bank when in the autumn of 1898 Nancy secured an engagement in the provincial tour of a popular musical comedy to sing a contralto part with a good song in each of the two acts and, what interested her much more, a salary of five pounds a week. It was while she was with this company that she met John Kenrick.
CHAPTER XIX
NANCY’S CONTRALTO