Ting! The curtain, the light; and, on the stage, the Roofers were glittering with gold and silver and their boyish voices came in gusts, punctuated by the jerky flights of their short skirts.
“Your old sweetheart, eh, Lily?” said Thea, pointing to the boy-violinist, who had just arrived.
Lily had only a careless glance for the boy-violinist, who was wiping his eye-glasses and pulling at his cuffs, while a call-boy was adjusting the false seat into which two bulldogs would presently dig their teeth. All the fascination was gone for Lily: it was no longer the child prodigy; a grotesque Orpheus, in a laurel and parsley crown, he now introduced his music-hating dogs, who interrupted his performance with plaintive and angry howls and ended by leaping at the seat of his trousers in a mad rush across the stage.
Lily, who had “gone through the mill,” looked upon him as a mere josser, had for him the instinctive contempt entertained by the real artiste for those fiddlers, those singers, those dancers and other drones brought up with blows of the hat.
“Pooh! I have some one better than that,” exclaimed Lily, excited by the proximity of the Roofers.
“If you have any one better than that and he loves you,” said Thea, in a dreamy voice, “love him, Lily, keep him; as for me, I no longer risk having to do with men.”
“I do!” Lily whispered, with a frightened glance around her. “As much as I can! I love talking to men! Why, Thea, and don’t you like love letters and p.-c.’s?”
Ting! Ting! Orpheus left the stage, with his bulldogs hanging to him.
Ting! It was dark again; ropes, plated rings were let down from the flies; the Three Graces, like quivering marble statues, took one another by the hand to make their entrance.
Ting! From their perches on either side, two electricians sent the lime-light beating down on an involved group of ropes, bars and hardened limbs.