"First-rate idea!" Joe agreed cordially. "Come along, old chap." Mr. Beverley allowed himself to be led away, mournfully yet faintly protesting.
"Funny thing he should mind having his real name known, isn't it? I'm sure I shouldn't mind mine being known, if I had one, but I don't think I have. I recollect being called 'Sal' at the theatre. Old Bramston—the one who boxed my ears, as I said—named me. He'd been out in the East as a young man and liked reading about it. So, when he named me, he combined his information, like the man in Dickens, and made up the name you see on the bills. It'll descend to posterity in old Langley Etheringham's memoirs. He's writing them, his wife told me so. Well, what do you think of the theatre—inside view—Mr. Lisle?"
"I think it's extraordinarily interesting."
"I've been in it all my life, and I wouldn't change. It takes your mind off things so—sort of gives you two lives. You come down here in the blues over your debts, or your love-affairs, or something—and in five minutes you're somebody else, or—" She gave a little laugh—"rotting somebody else, which is nearly as good."
"By Jove, that's exactly what it does do!" cried Arthur. "It's done me heaps of good."
"You'll have got something for your money, anyhow, won't you?"
"Oh, but I want to get more than that!"
"So do I!" she laughed. "I want the salary. But one never knows. This time to-morrow we may be waiting for the laughs that don't come. You can always pretty well hear Willie asking for them in the proper places. And when they don't come, it's such a sell that it makes me want to giggle myself. It might work! What the notices call my infectious laughter!"
"Well, that's just what your laughter is."
"They catch a word like that from one another—like mumps or measles. I'm always 'infectious;' Willie's always 'indefat'—'indefatig'—you know; I can never get to the end of it! Bramston used to be 'sterling' always; it made him just mad when he saw the word—used awful language!" She laughed, "infectiously," at the recollection.