“My preserver! Then it’s to you I owe it he’s hankering for his own show back again! Not that he could expect to do any business in my own town, or indeed any other. He forgot that while I, unseen, can be Duke, the public won’t look at him for a moment as Flippance. He takes the name of Flippance in vain—the public knows the difference between a barnstormer and their own Tony. To say nothing of that mincing little Duchess after my full-throated, full-bosomed Polly. Poor dear Polly—pining away pulling strings!”
“Why, she told me,” said the astonished Jinny, “that she wouldn’t go back on the stage for all the treasures of the Crystal Palace.”
“Ah, that’s her unselfishness—bless her!—her own crystal soul. She knows how the stage tries her pa’s nerves. But haven’t I stood by her side as we jogged the figures and seen her poor phiz working at the thought of being cut off from her public like in a diving-bell? She takes things hard, does Polly, not like the Duchess, who’s got no more temperament than a tinned sardine. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“If you mean Mrs. Duke, she was with him yesterday. A pretty, blue-eyed woman, with golden hair.”
“Oh, is it golden this season? But have you seen her act, I mean?”
“I’ve never seen a play at all!”
“Tut, tut, tut! Then you’ve never seen Me!”
“Oh—you seem to me a play all the time,” she said candidly.
He was not displeased. “Then you do have an idea what a play is?”
“I’ve seen Punch and Judy—and the Christmas mummers.”