We traveled in this way for nearly two years, visiting a new place every day, and making, I think, about ten to fifteen pounds a performance.  Our little pieces were very pretty, but very slight, too; and I can only suppose that the people thought that “never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it,” for they received our entertainment very well.  The time had come when my little brothers had to be sent to school, and our earnings came in useful.

When the tour came to an end in 1861, I went to London with my father to find an engagement, while Kate joined the stock company at Bristol.  We still gave the “Drawing-room Entertainment” at Ryde in the summer, and it still drew large audiences.

In London my name was put on an agent’s books in the usual way, and presently he sent me to Madame Albina de Rhona, who had not long taken over the management of the Royal Soho Theater and changed its name to the Royalty.  The improvement did not stop at the new play.  French workmen had swept and garnished the dusty, dingy place and transformed it into a theater as dainty and pretty as Madame de Rhona herself.  Dancing was Madame’s strong point, but she had been very successful as an actress too, first in Paris and Petersburg, and then in London at the St. James’s and Drury Lane.  What made her go into management on her own account I don’t know.  I suppose she was ambitious, and rich enough for the enterprise.

At this time I was “in standing water,” as Malvolio says of Viola when she is dressed as a boy.  I was neither child nor woman—­a long-legged girl of about thirteen, still in short skirts, and feeling that I ought to have long ones.  However, when I set out with father to see Madam de Rhona, I was very smart.  I borrowed Kate’s new bonnet—­pink silk trimmed with black lace—­and thought I looked nice in it.  So did father, for he said on the way to the theater that pink was my color.  In fact, I am sure it was the bonnet that made Madame de Rhona engage me on the spot!

She was the first Frenchwoman I had ever met, and I was tremendously interested in her.  Her neat and expressive ways made me feel very “small,” or rather big and clumsy, even at the first interview.  A quick-tempered, bright, energetic little woman, she nearly frightened me out of my wits at the first rehearsal by dancing round me on the stage in a perfect frenzy of anger at what she was pleased to call my stupidity.  Then something I did suddenly pleased her, and she overwhelmed me with compliments and praise.  After a time these became the order of the day, and she soon won my youthful affections.  “Gross flattery,” as a friend of mine says, “is good enough for me!” Madame de Rhona was, moreover, very kind-hearted and generous.  To her generosity I owed the first piece of jewelery I ever possessed—­a pretty little brooch, which, with characteristic carelessness, I promptly lost!  Besides being flattered by her praise and