caught him
one day chasing my daughter. I seized him by his horns to inflict severe
punishment; but then I saw that his eyes were exactly like mine, and it
made me laugh so much that I let him go and never punished him at all.

"Boo" became an institution in these days. She was the wife of a doctor
who kept a private asylum in the neighboring village, and on his death
she tried to look after the lunatics herself. But she wasn't at all
successful! They kept escaping, and people didn't like it. This was my
gain, for "Boo" came to look after me instead, and for the next thirty
years I was her only lunatic, and she my most constant companion and
dear and loyal friend.

We seldom went to London. When we did, Ted nearly had a fit at seeing so
many "we'els go wound." But we went to Normandy, and saw Lisieux,
Mantes, Bayeux. Long afterwards, when I was feeling as hard as sandpaper
on the stage, I had only to recall some of the divine music I had heard
in those great churches abroad to become soft, melted, able to act. I
remember in some cathedral we left little Edy sitting down below while
we climbed up into the clerestory to look at some beautiful piece of
architecture. The choir were practicing, and suddenly there rose a boy's
voice, pure, effortless, and clear.... For years that moment stayed with
me. When we came down to fetch Edy, she said:

"Ssh! ssh! Miss Edy has seen the angels!"

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 some one 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 Wand