I murmured the well-known quotation.
“Mrs. O'Kelly to a T,” concurred the O'Kelly. “I sometimes wonder if Lady Scott may not have been the same sort of woman.”
“The unfortunate part of it is,” continued the O'Kelly, “that I'm such a healthy beggar; it don't give her a chance. If I were only a chronic invalid, now, there's nothing that woman would not do to make me happy. As it is—” The O'Kelly struck a chord. We resumed our studies.
But to return to our conversation at the stage door.
“Meet me at the Cheshire Cheese at one o'clock,” said the O'Kelly, shaking hands. “If ye don't get on here, we'll try something else; but I've spoken to Hodgson, and I think ye will. Good luck to ye!”
He went his way and I mine. In a glass box just behind the door a curved-nose, round-eyed little man, looking like an angry bird in a cage, demanded of me my business. I showed him my letter of appointment.
“Up the passage, across the stage, along the corridor, first floor, second door on the right,” he instructed me in one breath, and shut the window with a snap.
I proceeded up the passage. It somewhat surprised me to discover that I was not in the least excited at the thought of this, my first introduction to “behind the scenes.”
I recall my father's asking a young soldier on his return from the Crimea what had been his sensations at the commencement of his first charge.
“Well,” replied the young fellow, “I was worrying all the time, remembering I had rushed out leaving the beer tap running in the canteen, and I could not forget it.”