“Something nice about Letizia?” she whispered back.
“He said he was damned if she wasn’t the best girl John Richards had found for years. And how I didn’t get up and kiss the blessed top of his bald head I’m bothered if I know.”
The curtain fell on the first act, and the loudest applause was always for Letizia.
“Oh, she’s knocked ’em,” Mrs. Pottage declared. “She’s absolutely knocked ’em. But she’s lovely! And, oh, dear, God bless us both, but how she did remind me of her pore father once or twice.”
The old lady fumbled for Nancy’s hand and squeezed it hard.
“Well, I don’t mind saying she’s made me feel like a girl again,” Mrs. Pottage went on after a moment or two of silence. “Every sweetheart I ever had come into my mind while she was singing that song. You know! It was like riding on the top of a bus in fine weather when they’ve just watered the streets and the may’s out in flower and you say to yourself there’s no place like dear old London after all and begin to nod and dream as you go jogging along, thinking of old faces and old fancies and the fun you’ve had years ago.”
The curtain rose on the second act, and with every line she said and with every note she sang Lettie Fuller became nearer and dearer to her audience that night.
Once, after a sally had been taken up by the house in roars of laughter, Mrs. Pottage exclaimed to Nancy:
“Hark! did you hear that? That was Mrs. Bugbird’s laugh above the lot. Oh, I’d reckonise that laugh if I was in my coffin. You mark my words, she’ll be whooping in a moment. That’s always the way it gets her. But pore Aggie’ll pat her back if she whoops too hard.”
In spite of the encores—and Letizia always won by far the loudest and most persistent of them—the curtain fell at last on another thundering Vanity success.