“The way you drive a man not to drink is awful,” he groaned. “Never mind. I’ve got cool again. Talking to you is as good as a drink. Guardian angel!” He squeezed her horn. “You see,” he narrated, as they drove townwards, “Duke turned up here with the Flippance Fit-Up on Saturday night, and struck an awful frost.” “So he told me,” said Jinny. “I met him yesterday when I came out of chapel, and I told him what a roaring trade you were doing.” “My preserver! Then it’s to you I owe it he’s hankering for his own show back again! Not that he could expect to do any business in my own town, or indeed any other. He forgot that while I, unseen, can be Duke, the public won’t look at him for a moment as Flippance. He takes the name of Flippance in vain—the public knows the difference between a barnstormer and their own Tony. To say nothing of that mincing little Duchess after my full-throated, full-bosomed Polly. Poor dear Polly—pining away pulling strings!” “Why, she told me,” said the astonished Jinny, “that she wouldn’t go back on the stage for all the treasures of the Crystal Palace.” “Ah, that’s her unselfishness—bless her!—her own crystal soul. She knows how the stage tries her pa’s nerves. But haven’t I stood by her side as we jogged the figures and seen her poor phiz working at the thought of being cut off from her public like in a diving-bell? She takes things hard, does Polly, not like the Duchess, who’s got no more temperament than a tinned sardine. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” “If you mean Mrs. Duke, she was with him yesterday. A pretty, blue-eyed woman, with golden hair.” “Oh, is it golden this season? But have you seen her act, I mean?” “I’ve never seen a play at all!” “Tut, tut, tut! Then you’ve never seen Me!” “Oh—you seem to me a play all the time,” she said candidly. He was not displeased. “Then you do have an idea what a play is?” “I’ve seen _Punch and Judy_—and the Christmas mummers.” He laughed. “Well, if Polly was working _Punch and Judy_ from behind, there’d be more life and go in her than there is to the Duchess when she’s on the stage playing Juliet. The public won’t pay to see a china doll. But my Polly! I tell you that standing with the strings in her hand, with nobody’s eye on her but mine and her Maker’s, and in a space where there isn’t room to swing a cat, I’ve seen that girl raging and shouting and tearing about with the passion of the scene till I’ve had to wake up too, and we’ve gone at it ding-dong, hammer and tongs. And with three figures each to work, and voices to keep changing, it’s no mean feat, I can tell you. Duke and his Duchess now, when they worked the figures, used to just stand like stocks, saying the words, no expression or movement, except in the marionettes.” “But if the public sees only the marionettes——!” said Jinny.