The stars were out; not that Poppy cared a rap about the stars.
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.