“I am ’most afraid to enter here without Nell,” she thought, faint-heartedly, as she glanced about the room and her eyes fell upon the great Lord Buckingham.
“Oranges? Will you have my oranges? Only sixpence, my lord,” she ventured at length, then hesitatingly advanced and offered her wares; but his lordship’s thoughts were far away.
“What shall we have for supper?” was his sole concern. “I think Nelly would like spiced tongue.” Instantly his hands and eyes were raised in mock invocation of the intervention of the Powers that Be, and so suddenly that Moll drew back. “Ye Gods,” he exclaimed aloud, “she has enough of that already! Ah, the vintage of—”
It was more habit than courage which brought to Moll’s trembling lips the familiar orange-cry, which again interrupted him: “Oranges; only sixpence. Here is one picked for you, my lord.”
Buckingham’s eyes flashed with anger; he was not wont to have his way, much less his pleasure, disturbed by the lowly. “Oh, hang you, you disturb me. I am thinking; don’t you perceive I am thinking? Begone!”
“Only sixpence, my lord; I have not sold one to-night,” pleaded the girl, sadly.
His lordship rose irritably. “I have no pauper’s pence,” he exclaimed. “Out of my way! Ragbag!” He pushed the girl roughly aside and crossed the room.
At the same instant, there was confusion at the stage-door, the climax of which was the re-entrance of Hart into the greenroom.
“How can a man play when he trembles for his life lest he step upon a lord?” cried the angry manager. “They should be horsewhipped off the stage, and”–his eyes falling upon Buckingham–“out of the greenroom.”
“Ah, Hart,” began his lordship, with a patronizing air, “why is Nelly so long? I desire to see her.”