"You're going to the theatre to-night, aren't you, Austin?" she said, as he returned from seeing Mr Sheepshanks courteously off the premises. "I want you to post a letter for me on your way. Post it at the Central Office, so as to be sure it catches the night mail. It's a business letter of importance."
"All right, auntie," he replied, arranging his trouser so that it should fall gracefully over his wooden leg.
"And I do wish, Austin, that you'd behave rather more like other people when Mr Sheepshanks comes to see us. There really is no necessity for talking to him in the way you do. Of course it was a great compliment, his asking you to take a class in the Sunday-school, though I could have told him that he couldn't possibly have made an absurder choice, and you might very well have contented yourself with regretting your utter unfitness for such a post without exposing your ignorance in the way you did. The idea of telling a clergyman, too, that the Book of Genesis was too improper for boys to read, when he had just been recommending it! I thought you'd have had more respect for his position, whatever silly notions you may have yourself."
"I do respect the vicar; he's quite a nice little thing," replied Austin, in a conciliatory tone. "And of course he thinks just what a vicar ought to think, and I suppose what all vicars do think. But as I'm not a vicar myself I don't see that I am bound to think as they do."
"You a vicar, indeed!" sniffed Aunt Charlotte. "A remarkable sort of vicar you'd make, and pretty sermons you'd preach if you had the chance. What time does this performance of yours begin to-night?"
"At eight, I believe."
"Well, then, I'll just go in and tell cook to let us have dinner a quarter of an hour earlier than usual," said Aunt Charlotte, as she folded up her work. "The omnibus from the 'Peacock' will get you into town in plenty of time, and the walk back afterwards will do you good."
The town in question was about a couple of miles from the village where Austin lived—a clean, cheerful, prosperous little borough, with plenty of good shops, a commodious theatre, several churches and chapels, and a fine market. Dinner was soon disposed of, and as the omnibus which plied between the two places clattered and rattled along at a good speed—having to meet the seven-fifty down-train at the railway station—he was able to post his aunt's precious letter and slip into his stall in the dress-circle before the curtain rose. The orchestra was rioting through a composition called 'The Clang o' the Wooden Shoon,' as an appropriate introduction to a tragedy the scene of which was laid in Nineveh; the house seemed fairly full, and the air was heavy with that peculiar smell, a sort of doubtfully aromatic stuffiness, which is so grateful to the nostrils of playgoers. Austin gazed around him with keen interest. He had not been inside a theatre for years, and the vivid description that Mr Buskin had given him of the show he was about to witness filled him with pleasurable anticipation. To all intents and purposes, the experience that awaited him was something entirely new; how, he wondered, would it fit into his scheme of life? What room would there be, in his idealistic philosophy, for the stage?
Then the music came to an end in a series of defiant bangs, the curtain rolled itself out of sight, and a brilliant spectacle appeared. The only occupant of the scene at first was a gentleman in a thick black beard and fantastic garb who seemed to have acquired the habit of talking very loudly to himself. In this way the audience discovered that the gentleman, who was no less a personage than the Queen's brother, was seriously dissatisfied with his royal brother-in-law, whose habits were of a nature which did not make for the harmony of his domestic circle. Then soft music was heard, and in lounged Sardanapalus himself—a glittering figure in flowing robes of silver and pale blue, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by a crowd of slaves and women all very elegantly dressed; and it really was quite wonderful to notice how his Majesty lolled and languished about the stage, how beautifully affected all his gestures were, and with what a high-bred supercilious drawl he rolled out his behests that a supper should be served at midnight in the pavilion that commanded a view of the Euphrates. And this magnificent, absurd creature—this mouthing, grimacing, attitudinising popinjay, thought Austin, was no other than Mr Bucephalus Buskin, with whom he had chatted on easy terms in a common field only a few days previously! The memory of the umbrella, the tight frock-coat, the bald head, the fat, reddish face, and the rather rusty "chimney-pot" here recurred to him, and he nearly giggled out loud in thinking how irresistibly funny Mr Buskin would look if he were now going through all these fanciful gesticulations in his walking dress. The fact was that the man himself was perfectly unrecognisable, and Austin was mightily impressed by what was really a signal triumph in the art of making up.