soubrette

"The amateur trotting horses who were just leaving the track from the last race were in a white lather—nervous, quivering, sensitive things. But Dan Patch was the old bored professional. When he looked up at the crowd it was like an old soubrette peeping through the curtains. He took one look and jogged on with about as much emotion as a butcher's delivery horse."
—Charles Leerhsen, Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 318