“I have never been in love.”
She shot a quick, darting glance at him and he blinked.
Flat Iron Market is a piece of waste land over against a railway arch. Here on Saturdays and holidays is held a traffic in old metal, cheap laces and trinkets, sweets and patent medicines, and in one corner are set up booths, merry-go-rounds, swing boats, cocoanut shies, and sometimes a penny gaff. In the evening, under the flare and flicker of naphtha lamps, the place is thronged with artisans and their wives and little dirty wizened children, and young men and maidens seeking the excitement of each other’s jostling neighborhood.
Now, as Beenham and Matilda came to it, it was dark and deserted; the wooden houses were shrouded, and the awnings of the little booths and the screens of the cocoanut shies flapped in the night wind. They passed a caravan with a fat woman and two young men sitting on the steps, and they yawped at the sight of Beenham’s white shirtfront.
“Does Mr. Copas live in a caravan?” asked Beenham.
“It’s the theayter,” replied Matilda.
Picking their way over the shafts of carts and empty wooden boxes, they came to a red and gilt fronted building adorned with mirrors and knobs and scrolls, above the portico of which was written: “Copases Theater Royal,” in large swollen letters. At either end of this inscription was a portrait, one of Mrs. Siddons in tragedy, the other of J. L. Toole in comedy. Toole had been only recently painted and had been given bright red hair. Mrs. Siddons, but for her label, would only have been recognizable by her nose.
In front of this erection was a narrow platform, on which stood a small automatic musical machine surmounted with tubular bells played by two little wooden figures, a man and a woman in Tyrolian costume, who moved along a semi-circular cavity. In the middle of the façade was an aperture closed in with striped canvas curtains. This aperture was approached from the ground by a flight of wooden steps through the platform.
“Please,” said Beenham, “please give my name as Mr. Mole.”
Matilda nodded and ran up the wooden steps and through the aperture. She called: