“There’s one thing, she thoroughly enjoyed her little self, and so did I, I’m bound to say, even if we was a bit noisy.”
“I’m afraid Letizia was very noisy indeed.”
“Yes, but nobody minded two penn’orth of gin except a dismal-faced widow-woman sitting just behind us, and she’d had more than two penn’orth before ever she come out which is my opinion.”
“My husband and I won’t have time to dress and come home between the shows,” said Nancy. “We’re having some dinner sent in to us here. The curtain goes up again at seven, and it’s nearly six now.”
There was a tap on the door, and Bram, still in his clown’s dress but without the tufted wig, peeped round the corner.
“Well, you’re a nice one,” he said to his daughter. “I nearly sent the policeman down to you.”
“Was you that white man with a funny face?” Letizia asked incredulously.
“There you are, I told you it was your dadda,” Mrs. Pottage put in.
“Yes,” said Letizia, and in the tone of the affirmation a desire to admit frankly that she had been wrong was mingled with a slight resentment that Mrs. Pottage should have been right.
When Letizia had departed with the landlady, Bram and Nancy joined several other members of the company at a picnic meal. The talk was mostly of the pantomime, of how this song had gone and how that joke had got across, of whether it would not be wiser to cut this scene out altogether and shorten that one.