The door opened, but it was not Nell. Her maid pointed toward the stage. Strings–for Strings was his name, or at least none knew him by a better–accordingly hobbled across the room–for the wars too had left their mark on him–and peeped off in the direction indicated.
“Gad,” he exclaimed, gleefully clapping his hands, “there she goes on the stage as a Moorish princess.”
There was a storm of applause without.
“Bravo, Nelly, bravo!” he continued. “She’s caught the lads in the pit. They worship Nell out there.” The old fellow straightened up as if he felt a personal pride in the audience for evincing such good taste.
“Oons! Jack Hart struts about like a young game-cock at his first fight,” he observed. He broke into an infectious laugh, which would have been a fine basso for Nell’s laugh.
From the manager, his eye turned toward the place which he himself had once occupied among the musicians. He began to dance up and down with both feet, his knees well bent, boy-fashion, and to clap his hands wildly. “Look ye, little Tompkins got my old place with the fiddle. Whack, de-doodle-de-do! Whack, de-doodle, de-doodle-de-do!” he cried, giving grotesque imitations to his own great glee of his successor as leader of the orchestra.
Then, shaking his head, confident of his own superiority with the bow, he turned back into the greenroom and, with his mouth half full of orange, uttered the droll dictum: “It will take more than catgut and horse-hair to make you a fiddler, Tommy, my boy.”
Thus Strings stood blandly sucking his orange with personal satisfaction in the centre of the room, when Dick entered from the stage. The call-boy paused as if he could not believe his eyes. He looked and looked again.
“Heigh-ho!” he exclaimed at last, and then rushed across the room to greet the old fiddler. “Why, Strings, I thought we would never see you again; how fares it with you?”
Strings placed the orange which he had been eating and which he knew full well was none of his own well behind him; and, assuming an unconcerned and serious air, he replied: “Odd! A little the worse for wear, Dickey, me and the old fiddle, but still smiling with the world.” There was a bit of a twinkle in his eye as he spoke.