Her first appearance to-night was in the character of a coster-girl, a part well suited to her audacity and impertinent prettiness.  Poppy was the tiniest dancer that ever whirled across a stage, a circumstance that somewhat diminished the vulgarity of her impersonation, while it gave it a very engaging character of its own.  Her small Cockney face, with its impudent laughing nose, its curling mouth (none too small), its big, twinkling blue eyes, was framed in a golden fringe and side curls.  She wore a purple velveteen skirt, a purple velveteen jacket with a large lace collar, and a still larger purple velveteen hat with white ostrich feathers that swayed madly from the perpendicular.

The secret of Poppy’s popularity lay in this, that you could always depend on her; she always played the same part in the same manner; but her manner was her own.  To come on the stage quietly; to look, in spite of her coster costume, the picture of suburban innocence, and pink and white propriety; to stand facing her audience for a second of time, motionless and in perfect gravity—­it was a trick that, though Poppy never varied it, had a more killing effect than the most ingenious impromptu.

“Sh—­sh—­sh—­sh!” A flutter of programmes in the pit was indignantly suppressed by the gallery.  There was a movement of Poppy’s right eyelid which in a larger woman would have been called a wink; in Poppy it appeared as an exaggerated twinkle.  It was greeted with a roar of rapturous applause.  Then Poppy, with her hands on her hips, and her head on one side, raised her Cockney voice in a high-pitched song, executing between each verse a slow, swinging chassee to the stage Humorist with the concertina.

      “Oh, she’s my fancy girl,
        With ’er ’air all outer curl,
      ’Ooks orf, eyes orf, petticoats all awry. 
        For then she isn’t shy;
        She gives ’er bangs a twirl,
    And it’s—­’Kiss me quick!’—­and—­’That’s the Trick!’
    —­and—­(dim)—­’Wouldn’t yer like to try?’”

When the stage Humorist with the concertina stopped chasseeing, and put his finger to his nose, and observed, “That’s wot you might call a dim innuender,” Rickman could have kicked him.

(cresc.),
’But got up fit ter kill,
In ‘er velverteen an’ frill,
It’s—­’Ands orf!’—­’Heyes orf!’—­’Fetch yer one in the heye!’—­
A strollin’ down the ’Igh,
With ‘Enery, Alf an’ Bill,
It’s—­’None er that!’—­and ’Mind my ’at!’—­and
(fortissimo)—­’WOULDN’T yer like to try!’”

“To try!  To try!” Her chassee quickened ever so little, doubled on itself, and became a tortuous thing.  Poppy’s feet beat out the measure that is danced on East End pavements to the music of the concertina.  In the very abandonment of burlesque Poppy remained an artist, and her dance preserved the gravity of the original ballet, designed for performance on a flagstone.  Now it unfolded; it burst its bounds; it was a rhythmic stampede.  Louder and louder, her clicking heels beat the furious time; higher and higher her dexterous toes flew to her feathers that bowed to meet them, and when her last superhuman kick sent her hat flying, and the Humorist caught it on his head, they had brought the house down.