“After the washing I fed the animals. There were two hundred ducks and fowls to feed, as well as the children. By the time I had done this, and cooked the dinner, the morning had flown away. After the midday meal I sewed. Sometimes I drove out in the pony-cart. And in the evening I walked across the common to fetch the milk. The babies used to roam where they liked on this common in charge of a bulldog, while I sat and read. I studied cookery-books instead of parts--Mrs. Beeton instead of Shakespeare! “Oh, blissful quiet days! How soon they came to an end! Already the shadow of financial trouble fell across my peace. Yet still I never thought of returning to the stage. “One day I was driving in a narrow lane, when the wheel of the pony-cart came off. I was standing there, thinking what I should do next, when a whole crowd of horsemen in ‘pink’ came leaping over the hedge into the lane. One of them stopped and asked if he could do anything. Then he looked hard at me and exclaimed: ‘Good God! It’s Nelly!’ The man was Charles Reade. “‘Where have you been all these years?’ he said. “‘I have been having a very happy time,’ I answered. “‘Well, you’ve had it long enough. Come back to the stage!’ “‘No, never!’ “‘You’re a fool! You ought to come back.’ “Suddenly I remembered the bailiff in the house a few miles away, and I said laughingly: ‘Well, perhaps I would think of it if someone would give me forty pounds a week!’ “‘Done!’ said Charles Reade. ‘I’ll give you that, and more, if you’ll come and play Philippa Chester in _The Wandering Heir_.’” Thus it was “dear, lovable, aggravating, childlike, crafty, gentle, obstinate, and entirely delightful and interesting Charles Reade,” to use Ellen Terry’s own characterization, who in 1874 induced her to return to the stage. He was then managing the Queen’s. Since 1868 she had not acted at all, but she was well remembered, and her reappearance was cordially welcomed. The play was one of Reade’s own, _The Wandering Heir_, and in course of it Miss Terry appeared in male attire--one of the few times she had what old timers used to know as “breeches parts.” From all accounts it was a buoyant, charming impersonation. The author complimented her on her self-denial in making what he called “some sacrifice of beauty to pass for a boy, so that the audience can’t say: ‘Why, James must be a fool not to see she is a girl.’”