“How could you learn to do it like an expert?”
“Got a book of instructions and studied it till I knew it by heart.”
“Huah! Don’t take much stock in such books. Fellow’s got to learn by experience.”
“I got some experience.”
“How?”
“Well, the others found I knew something about it, and I had to make up the whole company. In that way I got a chance to try my hand at all sorts of characters, for some of the fellows impersonated old men, some brigands, some girls, and so forth.”
“Well,” said old Dan, “I rather think you have a way of catching onto things in a hurry. You’re all right. What are you going to do now?”
“Study till it is time to go on.”
Frank was to appear in the first act in ordinary street clothes, so his costume for that act gave him no trouble.
He took the manuscript and sat down in a corner, where he went at it again, and he did not even hear the band when it played its first piece in the theater. He was aroused by Havener, who came in and said: