These show folks were not long in finding out that the working people of Glasgow among whom they pitched on a beautiful green, dearly loved a good play and a pretty song, and it was just as Gourmand had predicted, they—especially Peggy—carried everything before them and the money kept rolling in for weeks on end.
Wee Willie, the sad-eyed dwarf, took every heart by storm, for he was neither mis-shapen nor deformed, and the music that seemed to float out of his fiddle was inexpressibly tender and sweet.
Not only was Willie called out before the footlights every evening, but he had to be handed round.
“Hand roon’ the wee yin,” the audience would cry, and Gourmie had to obey. Wee Willie was passed around both boxes and pit, and if he received caresses from the ladies he amply repaid them, for he made them laugh till the very rafters rang. But he himself didn’t laugh in the very least. Oh, no, as serious as a Madonna was he.
I think that though they admired her, the gallants of Glasgow were a little afraid of Peggy. She was so ethereal, such an ideally lovely child, that she looked to them more like a being from another world than anything else.
Molly Muldoon was a bit of timber of quite another grain. She acted a witch to perfection, but when she was called before the curtain, never the much of a witch was about Molly. She gave a wild Irish whoop, the band struck up a jig, and no Paddy ever danced more merrily than she did then. When she was summoned a second time, she placed upon the stage two brooms crossed like swords, kilted her “coaties,” and danced Ghillie Callum to perfection.
There was no doubt about it, Fitzroy’s company not only deserved success but commanded it.
After nearly a month the show journeyed north, but not until Peggy and Willie, the two favourites, had bumper-house benefits, and at the finish the house rose en masse and sung that beautiful song that so appeals to every truly Scottish heart—“Bonnie Charlie’s noo awa’.”
Fitzroy and his people would long remember the sweet ringing chorus—
Will ye no come back again?
Will ye no come back again?
Better loo’d ye canna be,
Will ye no come back again?