In “Home for the Holidays,” which came first on our little programme, Kate played Letitia Melrose, a young girl of about seventeen, who is expecting her young brother “home for the holidays.”  Letitia, if I remember right, was discovered soliloquizing somewhat after this fashion:  “Dear little Harry!  Left all alone in the world, as we are, I feel such responsibility about him.  Shall I find him changed, I wonder, after two years’ absence?  He has not answered my letters lately.  I hope he got the cake and toffee I sent him, but I’ve not heard a word.”  At this point I entered as Harry, but instead of being the innocent little schoolboy of Letitia’s fond imagination, Harry appears in loud peg-top trousers (peg-top trousers were very fashionable in 1860), with a big cigar in his mouth, and his hat worn jauntily on one side.  His talk is all of racing, betting, and fighting.  Letty is struck dumb with astonishment at first, but the awful change, which two years have effected, gradually dawns on her.  She implores him to turn from his idle, foolish ways.  Master Harry sinks on his knees by her side, but just as his sister is about to rejoice and kiss him, he looks up in her face and bursts into loud laughter.  She is much exasperated, and, threatening to send some one to him who will talk to him in a very different fashion, she leaves the stage.  Master Hopeful thereupon dons his dressing-gown and smoking cap, and, lying full length upon the sofa, begins to have a quiet smoke.  He is interrupted by the appearance of a most wonderful and grim old woman in blue spectacles—­Mrs. Terrorbody.  This is no other than “Sister Letty,” dressed up in order to frighten the youth out of his wits.  She talks and talks, and, after painting vivid pictures of what will become of him unless he alters his “vile ways,” leaves him, but not before she succeeds in making him shed tears, half of fright and half of anger.  Later on, Sister Letty, looking from the window, sees a grand fight going on between Master Harry and a butcher-boy, and then Harry enters with his coat off, his sleeves tucked up, explaining in a state of blazing excitement that he “had to fight that butcher-boy, because he had struck a little girl in the street.”  Letty sees that the lad has a fine nature in spite of his folly, and appeals to his heart and the nobility of his nature—­this time not in vain.

“Distant Relations” was far more inconsequent, but it served to show our versatility, at any rate.  I was all things by turns, and nothing long!  First I was the page boy who admitted the “relations” (Kate in many guises).  Then I was a relation myself—­Giles, a rustic.  As Giles, I suddenly asked if the audience would like to hear me play the drum, and “obliged” with a drum solo, in which I had spent a great deal of time perfecting myself.  Long before this I remember dimly some rehearsal when I was put in the orchestra and taken care of by “the gentleman who played the drum,” and how badly I wanted to play it too!  I afterwards took lessons from Mr. Woodhouse, the drummer at the Princess’s.  Kate gave an imitation of Mrs. Kean as Constance so beautifully that she used to bring tears to my eyes, and make the audience weep too.