The secret of Gritty's success was patent. On the stage she projected endearingly human qualities, adding a touch of the pert and the incongruous, her whole instinctive object being to make people like her. He had noticed that other women in the cast, more beautiful but less successful, walked on assuming that the audience must be overcome by their charm. Gritty took nothing for granted. She "worked" every minute, as he could see from the gestures and tone-shadings with which she drove home her first song. This ditty descanted upon the woes and hardships of an "honest hired girl":
And your pa(r)
Blows your wages in a bar,
You better throw yourself into the lake.
For you can't keep your honour,
Your virtue is a gonner,
If your pa(r) bags all your savings
And you try to live on shavings
And there's nothing in your stomach but a ache."
It was followed by a dolorous dance in which Gritty made capital of her big boots and the long wet mop. She galumphed about the stage with an infectious sense of rhythm, while the gallery softly whistled the tune, then at the approach of the last bars she neared the wings, always neatly cavorting, and repeated the catch line. The "a' ache"—the elision of the consonant—was the real Gritty, and the audience seemed to know it.
In the interval he sent around his card and received a prompt reply:
"You dear old darling. Talk about bolts from the blue. Come back after the show. Ask for Louis who'll bring you to my dressing-room. You're to have supper with me. Oh Paul three cheers."
For a week Gritty gave him all her available time, which in view of matinées, fittings, and visits to the
