The hero of "The Wandering Heir," when I first took up the part of
Philippa, was played by Edmund Leathes, but afterward by Johnston
Forbes-Robertson. Everyone knows how good-looking he is now, but as a
boy he was wonderful--a dreamy, poetic-looking creature in a blue smock,
far more of an artist than an actor--he promised to paint quite
beautifully--and full of aspirations and ideals. In those days began a
friendship between us which has lasted unbroken until this moment. His
father and mother were delightful people, and very kind to me always.

Everyone was kind to me at this time. Friends whom I had thought would
be estranged by my long absence rallied round me and welcomed me as if
it were six minutes instead of six years since I had dropped out of
their ken. I was not yet a "made" woman, but I had a profitable
engagement, and a delightful one, too, with Charles Reade, and I felt an
enthusiasm for my work which had been wholly absent when I had returned
to the stage the first time. My children were left in the country at
first, but they came up and joined me when, in the year following "The
Wandering Heir," I went to the Bancrofts at the Prince of Wales's. I
never had the slightest fear of leaving them to their own devices, for
they always knew how to amuse themselves, and were very independent and
dependable in spite of their extreme youth. I have often thanked Heaven
since that, with all their faults, my boy and girl have never been lazy
and never dull. At this time Teddy always had a pencil in his hand, when
he wasn't looking for his biscuit--he was a greedy little thing!--and
Edy was hammering clothes onto her dolls with tin-tacks! Teddy said
poetry beautifully, and when he and his sister were still tiny mites,
they used to go through scene after scene of "As You Like It," for their
own amusement, not for an audience, in the wilderness at Hampton Court.
They were by no means prodigies, but it did not surprise me that my son,