Tipping the Velvet Read Free Page A

Nelly made me shiver.
    Power had sung The Last of the Dandies' to us six months She looked, I suppose, like a very pretty boy, for her face before she had worn tights and bullion fringe, just like a was a perfect oval, and her eyes were large and dark at the ballet-girl - only carried a cane and a billycock hat to make lashes, and her lips were rosy and full. Her figure, too, was her boyish. Kitty Butler did not wear tights or spangles. She boy-like and slender - yet rounded, vaguely but was, as Tricky had billed her, a kind of perfect West-End unmistakably, at the bosom, the stomach, and the hips, in a swell. She wore a suit -a handsome gentleman's suit, cut to way no real boy's ever was; and her shoes, I noticed after a her size, and lined at the cuffs and the flaps with flashing moment, had two-inch heels to them. But she strode like a silk. There was a rose in her lapel, and lavender gloves at boy, and stood like one, with her feet far apart and her her pocket. From beneath her waistcoat shone a stiff-hands thrust carelessly into her trouser pockets, and her fronted shirt of snowy white, with a stand-up collar two head at an arrogant angle, at the very front of the stage; and inches high. Around the collar was a white bow-tie; and on when she sang, her voice was a boy's voice - sweet and her head there was a topper. When she took the topper off -
    terribly true.
    as she did now to salute the audience with a gay 'Hallo!' -
    Her effect upon that over-heated hall was wonderful. Like one saw that her hair was perfectly cropped.
    me, my neighbours all sat up, and gazed at her with shining eyes. Her songs were all well-chosen ones - things like 13

    14

    'Drink Up, Boys!', and 'Sweethearts and Wives', which the We called for her, but there were no more encores. The likes of G. H. Macdermott had already made famous, and curtain fell, the orchestra played; Tricky struck his gavel with which we could all, in consequence, join in - though it upon his table, blew out his candle, and it was the interval.
    was peculiarly thrilling to have them sung to us, not by a I peered, blinking, into the seats below, trying to catch sight gent, but by a girl, in neck-tie and trousers. In between each of the girl who had been thrown the flower. I could not song she addressed herself, in a swaggering, confidential think of anything more wonderful, at that moment, than to tone, to the audience, and exchanged little bits of nonsense receive a rose from Kitty Butler's hand.
    with Tricky Reeves at his chairman's table. Her speaking I had gone to the Palace, like everyone else that night, to voice was like her singing one -strong and healthy, and see Gully Sutherland; but when he made his appearance at wonderfully warm upon the ear. Her accent was sometimes last -mopping his brow with a giant spotted handkerchief, music-hall cockney, sometimes theatrical-genteel, complaining about the Canterbury heat and sending the sometimes pure broad Kent.
    audience into fits of sweaty laughter with his comical songs Her set lasted no longer than the customary fifteen minutes and his face-pulling -1 found that, after all, I hadn't the or so, but she was cheered and shouted back on to the stage heart for him. I wished only that Miss Butler would stride at the end of that time twice over. Her final song was a upon the stage again, to fix us with her elegant, arrogant gentle one - a ballad about roses and a lost sweetheart. As gaze - to sing to us about champagne, and shouting she sang she removed her hat and held it to her bosom; then
    'Hurrah!' at the races. The thought made me restless. At last she pulled the flower from her lapel and placed it against Alice - who was laughing at Gully's grimaces as loudly as her cheek, and seemed to weep a little. The audience, in everybody else - put her mouth to my ear: 'What's up with sympathy, let out one huge collective sigh, and bit their lips you?'
    to hear her boyish tones grow suddenly so tender.
    'I'm hot,' I said; and