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.
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