Chapter 5

She went first into a tobacconist's--and sold cigarettes. Sometimes she suffered from actual want, and ate fried fish. "Do you know how nice fried fish tastes in London,--you on 'the Oilan'?" she wrote gayly. "I'm getting on splendidly; so's John Gale, I suppose, though he's looking cadaverous from starving himself all round. Tell aunty I haven't seen the Queen yet, though after all I really believe she has not seen me."

Then, after a severe struggle, she succeeded in getting on the stage as a song and dance girl. She sang melodiously and danced divinely, so remarkably that the ignorant public, knowing her to be a Manx girl, and vaguely associating her with the symbol of the Isle of Man, supposed she had three legs. She was the success of the season; her cup of ambition was filled. It was slightly embittered by the news that her friend Jinny Jones had killed herself in the church at the wedding of her recreant lover and the American heiress. But the affair was scarcely alluded to by the Society papers--who were naturally shocked at the bad taste of the deceased. And even Golly forgot it all--on the stage.