“Victor’s, indeed!” retorted the elastic old lady. “As if––”
“No one supposed, Madam, that at your age”––began the manager.
“At my age! If you think––”
“Are you all ready?” interrupted Barnes, hastily, 364 knowing he would be worsted in any argument with this veteran player. “Then clear the stage! Act first!” And the rehearsal began.
If the audience were specters, the performers moved, apparently without rhyme or reason, mere shadows on the dimly lighted stage; enacting some semblance to scenes of mortal life; their jests and gibes, unnatural in that comparatively empty place; their voices, out of the semi-darkness, like those of spirits rehearsing acts of long ago. In the evening it would all become an amusing, bright-colored reality, but now the barrenness of the scenes was forcibly apparent.
“That will do for to-day,” said the manager at the conclusion of the last act. “To-morrow, ladies and gentlemen, at the same time. And any one who is late––will be fined!”
“Changing the piece every few nights is all work and no play,” complained Susan.
“It will keep you out of mischief, my dear,” replied Barnes, gathering up his manuscripts.
“Oh, I don’t know about that!” returned Miss Susan, with a defiant toss of the head, as she moved toward the dressing-room where they had left their wraps. It was a small apartment, fairly bright and cheery, with here and there a portrait against the wall. Above the dressing-table hung a mirror, diamond-scratched with hieroglyphic scrawls, among which could be discerned a transfixed heart, spitted 365 like a lark on an arrow, and an etching of Lady Gay Spanker, with cork-screw curls. Taglioni, in pencil caricature, her limbs “divinely slender,” gyrated on her toes in reckless abandon above this mute record of names now forgotten.
“What lovely roses, Constance!” exclaimed Susan, as she entered, bending over a large bouquet on one of the chairs. “From the count, I presume?”