All went well until the last line.  Then he came to a stop.

Nothing would make him say sheep!

With a face beaming with anxiety to please, looking adorable, he would offer any word but the right one.

“And the hills are all covered with—­”

“With what, Teddy?”

“Master Teddy don’t know.”

“Something white, Teddy.”

“Snow?”

“No, no—­does snow rhyme with ’sleep’?”

“Paper?”

“No, no.  Now, I am not going to the theater until you say the right word.  What are the hills covered with?”

“People.”

“Teddy, you’re a very naughty boy.”

At this point he was put in the corner.  His first suggestion when he came out was: 

“Grass?  Trees?”

“Are grass or trees white?” said the despairing mother with her eye on the clock, which warned her that, after all, she would have to go to the theater without winning.

Meanwhile, Edy was murmuring:  “Sheep, Teddy,” in a loud aside, but
Teddy would not say it, not even when both he and I burst into tears!

At Hampton Court the two children, dressed in blue and white check pinafores, their hair closely cropped—­the little boy fat and fair (at this time he bore a remarkable resemblance to Laurence’s portrait of the youthful King of Rome), the little girl thin and dark—­ran as wild as though the desert had been their playground instead of the gardens of this old palace of kings!  They were always ready to show visitors (not so numerous then as now) the sights; prattled freely to them of “my mamma,” who was acting in London, and showed them the new trees which they had assisted the gardeners to plant in the wild garden, and christened after my parts.  A silver birch was Iolanthe, a maple Portia, an oak Mabel Vane.  Through their kind offices many a stranger found it easy to follow the intricacies of the famous Maze.  It was a fine life for them, surely, this unrestricted running to and fro in the gardens, with the great Palace as a civilizing influence!

It was for their sake that I was most glad of my increasing prosperity in my profession.  My engagement with the Bancrofts was exchanged at the close of the summer season of 1876 for an even more popular one with Mr. John Hare at the Court Theater, Sloane Square.

I had learned a great deal at the Prince of Wales’s, notably that the art of playing in modern plays in a tiny theater was quite different from the art of playing in the classics in a big theater.  The methods for big and little theaters are alike, yet quite unlike.  I had learned breadth in Shakespeare at the Princess’s, and had had to employ it again in romantic plays for Charles Reade.  The pit and gallery were the audience which we had to reach.  At the Prince of Wales’s I had to adopt a more delicate, more subtle, more intimate style.  But the breadth had to be there just the same—­as seen through the wrong end of the microscope.  In acting one must possess great strength before one can be delicate in the right way.  Too often weakness is mistaken for delicacy.