“Would you mind telling your little girl to kindly sit down,” the solemn and deeply interested woman behind requested of Mrs. Pottage.
“This is my lamb what Santy Claus gave me,” Letizia informed the solemn woman in her most engaging voice, at which the solemn woman turned to her neighbour and declared angrily that children oughtn’t to be allowed into pantomimes if they couldn’t behave theirselves a bit more civilised.
“Get down, duckie, there’s a love,” said Mrs. Pottage, who in spite of her contempt for the solemn woman could not but feel that she had some reason to complain.
“Well, I don’t want to see faver with that red nose,” objected Letizia, who thereupon sat down in her stall, but held her hands in front of her eyes to shut out the unpleasant aspect of her father in his comic disguise. However, Idle Jack did so many funny things that at last his daughter’s heart was won, so that presently she and Mrs. Pottage were leading the laughter of the house.
Finally when Idle Jack emptied a bag of flour on the Dame, Letizia was seized by such a rapture of appreciation that she flung her lamb into the orchestra and hit the first violin on the head.
“Faver,” she shouted. “I’ve frowed my lamb what Santy Claus gave me, and the wheedle-wheedle in the band has tooked him somewhere.”
Bram came down to the footlights and shook his fist at his small daughter, an intimate touch that drove the house frantic with delight and caused the solemn woman to observe to her neighbour that she didn’t know who did come to the theatre nowadays, such a common lot of people as they always seemed to be.
One of the features of pantomimes about this period was the introduction of a sentimental song, usually allotted to the Fairy Queen as having some pretensions to a voice, in the course of which a boy of about twelve, chosen no doubt from the local church or chapel choir, rose from his seat in the front row of the circle and answered the singer on the stage, to the extreme delectation of the audience.
The refrain of the song this year went:
Sweet Suzanne,