"Touch the bell twice," said Mrs. Chesney.
"Oh! I'll see Miss Chard down," said Chesney, but Poppy had made no delay in touching the bell and a maid magically appeared.
The next day she waited at the York Theatre and saw Marion Ashley after rehearsal.
"I wanted to thank you," she said, "and to tell you that after all I couldn't undertake that companionship. Something has happened that makes it impossible for me to leave home. I wrote to Mrs. Chesney last night."
The brightness of Marion's smile was dashed for an instant, but she speedily recovered.
"Never mind; a lucky thing has happened here. One of the walking-on girls dropped out to-day and they want another. Mr. Lingard is a friend of mine, and he's sure to have you when he sees you—you've just the face for romantic drama. Come along and see him; he went into his office a minute ago—don't forget to say you've been with Ravenhill."
And so through Marion Ashley's kindly offices Poppy found herself once more signing a contract to "walk-on-and-understudy" at a guinea a week!
But the romantic drama was an unromantic failure.
Long before the end of the first week, the principals were looking at each other with blank faces, and holding conclaves in each other's dressing-rooms for the purpose of exchanging opinions and reports on the probable duration of the run. In the "walkers-on" room they gave it three weeks, and that playing to "paper houses" every night.