“You young screech-owl!” said Compton, turning a severe face, though his eyes twinkled, upon Bobby. “Who taught you how to lie?”
“You said I was your aunt,” countered Bobby.
“Your uncle—nephew, I mean. This young monkey,” he went on, addressing the manager, the vision of Bobby’s latest mimicry still vivid in his memory, “is my nephew, Bobby Compton.”
“Why, I didn’t know you had a nephew,” said Heneman, still laughing. As he spoke he shook hands with the interesting youth.
“Neither did I till a while ago,” chuckled Compton. “Fact is I adopted him and christened him on the way in. It’s a long story, but he’s in my charge now. He’ll sit still and watch us working. Won’t you, Bobby?”
“I’ll watch you working all right,” said Compton’s new relation. Bobby had no intention of sitting still.
“Halloa, aunty!” said Bernadette, suddenly appearing on the scene, and smiling at Bobby, showing in the act a perfect and shining set of teeth.
“How do you do?” returned Bobby, bowing gravely. “You’ve got it wrong, though. He’s my uncle. He says so himself, and he ought to know.”
Before the rehearsal began every one there heard the story from the fair lady’s cupid-painted lips of the circumstances connected with Bobby’s admission into the Lantry cloister. The story filled with joy all the listeners save one. The bellhop did not even smile. The fact is, the bellhop, yielding to a long-fought temptation, had obtained a quid of tobacco from a stage carpenter, had indulged in his first and probably his last chew, and was just now filled with feelings of wild regret and a desire to lie down in some obscure spot and die.
As a result of Bernadette’s story every one, excepting of course the unhappy bellhop, was in a state of almost hilarious good humor when the rehearsal was called; in such humor that even when the star halted everything for several minutes by insisting that one of her shoes was improperly laced—though to the naked eye there was nothing out of order—and having her attendant do it all over again, no one grumbled.