The girls were appraising her costume; she felt their eyes and enjoyed the envy in them.  Her hat, with its immense bunch of poppies; her blouse of shot silk in green and violet; her gold watch, carelessly drawn out and returned to its pocket.  “Now what do you think I am?  A real lady, I’ll bet!” She caught a whisper about her hair.  Red, indeed!  Didn’t they wish they had anything like it!  Polly could have told them that at a ball she graced with her presence not long ago her hair was done up with no less than seventy-two pins.  Think of that!  Seventy-two pins!

She munched a cream tart, and turned her back upon the envious pair.

Back to Kennington Road by omnibus, riding outside, her eyes and hair doing execution upon a young man in a very high collar, who was, she saw, terribly tempted to address her, but, happily for himself, could not pluck up courage.  Polly liked to be addressed by strange young men; experience had made her so skilful in austere rebuke.

She rested in her bedroom, as stuffy and disorderly a room as could have been found in all Kennington Road.  Moggie, the general, was only allowed to enter it in the occupant’s presence, otherwise who knew what prying and filching might go on?  She paid a very low rent, thanks to Mrs. Bubb’s good nature, but the strained relations between them made it possible that she would have to leave, and she had been thinking to-day that she could very well afford a room in a better neighbourhood; not that, all things considered, she desired to quit this house, but Mrs. Bubb took too much upon herself.  Mrs. Bubb was the widow of a police officer; one of her children was in the Police Orphanage at Twickenham, and for the support of each of the others she received half a crown a week.  This, to be sure, justified the good woman in a certain spirit of pride; but when it came to calling names and making unpleasant insinuations—­If a young lady cannot have a harmless and profitable secret, what is the use of being a young lady?

On the way to her duties at the theatre, about seven o’clock, she entered a little stationer’s shop m an obscure street, and asked with a smile whether any letter had arrived for her.  Yes, there was one addressed in a careless hand to “Miss Robinson.”  This, in another obscure street hard by she opened.  On half a sheet of notepaper was printed with pen and ink the letters W.  S. T.—­that was all.  Polly had no difficulty in interpreting this cipher.  She tore up envelope and paper, and walked briskly on.

There was but a poor “house” this evening.  Commission on programmes would amount to very little indeed; but the young gentleman with the weak eyes, who came evening after evening, and must have seen the present piece a hundred times or so, gave her half a crown, weeping copiously from nervousness as he touched her hand.  He looked about seventeen, and Polly, who always greeted him with a smile of sportive condescension, wondered how his parents or guardians could allow him to live so recklessly.