From the "Liliputian Troupe," Peg graduated into the more lucrative and equally moral pursuit of theater orange vender. In slack seasons, when no cargo of oranges chanced to have landed recently from the Americas, she acted, off and on; playing, at twelve, mature roles in provincial theater comedies, and exhibiting a rollicking humor that carried her audiences by assaut. At seventeen, she was playing--at seven dollars and fifty cents a week--~Ophelia~ and other exacting parts. Incidentally, on both sides of the footlight candles--as actress and as orange girl in the pit--she had long since made herself the toast of the Dublin beaux. She was pretty--though not strikingly so. She had a ready, and occasionally flaying, Irish wit. She had, too, the magic, if still undeveloped, fascination of the super-woman. As to her morals--they were the morals of any and every other girl of her environment and upbringing. She was quite as good as she knew how to be. There was not a grain of real vice in her whole cosmos. But there was a blazing ambition; an ambition that was cramped and choked in the miserable, makeshift provincial playhouses. She burned to be a famous actress. There was no chance for her in Ireland. So she came to London. It was a case of burning her bridges behind her. For she carried a worn purse that held seventeen shillings. And the not-overnew dress she wore was her sole wardrobe. These were her tangible assets. On this capital and on genius and pluck and ambition and good looks and the charm that was daily growing more and more irresistible, Peg relied to keep her going. To manager after manager she trudged. Not one would find work for her. In all, she made nineteen applications. And she scored just precisely nineteen rank failures. Finally, half starved and wholly discouraged, she succeeded in interesting the manager of the Covent Garden Theater. And he gave her, or sold her, the chance she sought--the chance to appear before a London audience. Her first appearance on the metropolitan stage was all that was needed to prove her worth. At once she caught the public fancy. Soon she found herself the most popular actress in England. An air of mingled sadness and gayety in her stage work, an audacity and fresh youthfulness--and the mystic charm--carried her straight to the front. At this period she touched nothing but comedy--at which she had no peer--and preferably played male roles. Masculine attire set forth her stunning figure, and she played devil-may-care, boyish parts as could no other woman. One night, after the first act of "The Constant Couple," wherein, clad in small-clothes and hose, she was playing ~Sir Harry Wildair~, Peg ran laughing and triumphant into the greenroom. There she chanced to find her bitterest friend and rival, Mistress Kitty Clive, a clever but somewhat homely actress. Said Peg in delight: "They applauded me to the echoes! Faith, I believe half the men in the house thought I was really a boy."