Some years ago, when she was even younger than she is now, and not overburdened with this world’s gold, she was acting at the Vaudeville. It was her custom to go home every evening in an omnibus. One particularly cold night she jumped into the two-horse vehicle and huddled herself up in the farthest corner, thinking it would be warmer there than nearer the door in such bitter weather. She pulled her fur about her neck, and sat motionless and quiet. Presently two women at the other end arrested her attention; one was nudging the other, and saying:
“It is ’er, I tell yer; I know it’s ’er.”
“Nonsense, it ain’t ’er at all; she couldn’t have got out of the theayter so quick.”
“It is ’er, I tell yer; just look at ’er again.”
The other looked.
“No it ain’t; she was all laughing and fun, and that ’ere one looks quite sulky.”
The “sulky one,” though thoroughly tired and weary, smiled to herself.
I asked Miss Emery one day if she had ever been placed in any awkward predicament on the stage.
“I always remember one occasion,” she replied, “tragedy at the time, but a comedy now, perhaps. I was acting with Henry Irving in the States when I was about eighteen or nineteen, and felt very proud of the honour. We reached Chicago. Louis XI. was the play. In one act—I think it was the second—I went on as usual and did my part. Having finished, as I thought, I went to my room and began to wash my hands. It was a cold night, and my lovely white hands robbed of their paint were blue. The mixture was well off when the call boy shouted my name. Thinking he was having a joke I said: