For Miss Morrell had kept her talk with the manager and her appointment a secret, feeling that Sybil would thus be more at her ease, more natural in manner, than she could possibly be if she knew she was being inspected or examined, like a servant seeking a new place. And now, as the sisters smilingly consented to her plan, she turned in between the big billboards that announced the week's run of "Romeo and Juliet," with the name of the lady star in very, very large letters and "supported by" in small type. Then the name of the gentleman who played Romeo appeared in letters two sizes smaller than those of the star, and lower down, in quite small type, one read: "Mr. Stewart Thrall as Mercutio."
And Sybil tapped the letters with her parasol-tip, and said: "His performance was the best in the play. Why are his letters not the biggest?"
And the actress laughed, as she answered: "Children always ask difficult questions. Wait till you're older, my dear. Perhaps this time next year all this mystery of type and printers' ink will be clear to your understanding. But you are right about the acting of Thrall; his Mercutio is the best of his time."
She went to the box-office window, and learning from the half-strangled Barney that the manager was in his private office, she swept them across the vestibule, from whose walls the gold-framed pictured actors looked down inquiringly, tapped at a door, and, in answer to a cheery "Entrez!" entered the room, crying: "May I bring up my light infantry?"
And in answer to his laughing "By all means—I'm in need of reinforcements, you know!" she drew the girls inside, saying: "The Misses Lawton, Mr. Thrall, who ask of your grace a few moments hospitality and rest, as they, like myself, are country bred, and therefore easily shop-wearied."
"Well, none of you are shop-worn, at all events!" He laughed, as he found seats for them by the simple process of sweeping manuscripts, sheet-music, and what-not from the chair to the floor in a corner.
"Ah!" exclaimed Miss Morrell to the girls, "would he not make a blithe and bonnie housekeeper?"
And Sybil acquiesced with: "A place for everything and everything in that one place," while Thrall drew up the shade of the one real window, and let the full light into the dull red room, showing the age-blackened, iron-heavy, splendidly carved table and desk and chair and the freshness of the two young creatures looking up at him with such honest admiration in their innocent eyes as to fairly embarrass him. And, so strange a thing is memory, for just one moment he was a boy again in roundabout jacket and broad white collar, and his only sister, seventeen years old, stood at the altar with her young minister bridegroom, and looked at him with just such sweetly innocent eyes. He shook his head sharply and passed his hand across his eyes. His sister had been dead these twenty years—what had come over him?
And then Miss Morrell, who had been peering under and over everything in the room, asked, plaintively: "Where is it, Stewart, mon ami? What have you done with it? Am I to die before your eyes from sheer exhaustion, and without even an effort on your part to save me?"
And he, pointing to a hanging cabinet, said: "There's the life-saving station!" and threw open the door, revealing a complete outfit for coffee-making. Then, noting the girls' surprised looks, he went on: "Ah! I see you are not very well acquainted with my friend here, or has she been clever enough to conceal her dissipation? Be that as it may, we have here an awful example—a victim to——"