With dim eyes I hurriedly scribbled a line on a bit of wrapping paper, saying:—­“This little girl has played her part so nicely that I want her to have something to remember the occasion by, and since I shall not be in the city to-morrow, and cannot select anything myself, I must ask you to act for me.”  Then I folded it about a green note, and calling back the child, I turned her about and pinned both written message and money to the back of her apron.  The little creature understood the whole thing in a flash.  She danced about joyously:  “Oh, Sam,” she cried, “the lady’s gived me a present, and I can’t help myself, can I?”

And Sam wiped his hand on his breeches leg, and, clearing his throat hard, asked “if I’d mind shakin’ hands?”

And I didn’t mind it a bit.  Then, with clumsy care, he wrapped the child in her thin bit of a cape, and led her back to that home which gave lodgement to both poverty and pride.

While the play was new, in the very first engagement outside of New York, I had a very little child for that scene.  She was flaxen blond, and her mother had dressed her in bright sky-blue, which was in itself an odd colour for a little boy to wear.  Then the small breeches were so evidently mother-made, the tiny bits of legs surmounted with such an enormous breadth of seat, the wee Dutch-looking blue jacket, and the queer blue cap on top of the flaxen curls, gave the little creature the appearance of a Dutch doll.  The first sight of her, or, perhaps, I should say “him,” the first sight of him provoked a ripple of merriment; but when he turned full about on his bits of legs and toddled up stage, giving a full, perfect view of those trousers to a keenly observant public, people laughed the tears into their eyes.  And this baby noted the laughter, and resented it with a thrust-out lip and a frowning knit of his level brows that was funnier than even his blue clothing—­and after that one Parthian glance at the audience, he invariably toddled to me, and hid his face in my dress.  From the very first night the child was called “Little Breeches,” and to this day I know her by no other name.

Time passed by fast—­so fast; years came, years went.  “Miss Multon” had been lying by for a number of seasons.  “Renee de Moray,” “Odette,” “Raymonde,” etc., had been in use; then some one asked for “Miss Multon,” and she rose obediently from her trunk, took her manuscript from the shelf, and presented herself at command.  One evening, in a Southern California city, as I left my room ready for the first act of this play, the door-man told me a young woman had coaxed so hard to see me, for just one moment, that ignoring orders he had come to ask me if he might bring her in; she was not begging for anything, just a moment’s interview.  Rather wearily I gave permission, and in a few moments I saw him directing her toward me.  A very slender, very young bit of a woman, a mere girl, in fact, though she held in her arms a small white bundle.  As she came smilingly up to me, I perceived that she was very blond.  I bowed and said “Good evening” to her, but she kept looking in smiling silence at me for a moment or two, then said eagerly, “Don’t you know me, Miss Morris?”