"What song?" inquired Miss Lascelles.
"What song! Why, 'All the Winners.' I was going to say the Blithepoint football team was 'all the winners' in the match on Saturday, and now I'm told that Sweetbay beat 'em. My luck again! That queers my wheeze."
"Why not say," suggested Rosalind, "that the next time Sweetbay is rash enough to play them, Blithepoint will be all the winners?"
"Wot ho!" said the low comedian, brightening. He added promptly, "Of course that's what I was thinking of doing! But I must see if I can get all that cackle into the tune. Where's the conductor of the blooming band?"
Presently the cloth was displayed. It was no faithful representation of Hyde Park Corner, but it was still less like a mosque, and the players stood about, and sneered, and muttered contemptuous criticisms. Miss Jinman said that in all her experience she had never known such disgraceful mismanagement before. She was to figure in her Turkish trousers in this scene, and she pointed morosely to the omnibuses painted outside the hospital.
"Clear the stage, please!" cried Mr. Quisby. "We'll just run through Miss Vavasour's scenes. Come on, Miss Vavasour—we don't want to be here all day!" He told her this indignantly, as if the delay in lowering the cloth were directly attributable to her. She was the girl who had been suddenly promoted to the leading part.
The manager of the theatre lounged from the pit into the stalls, where Rosalind sat now too. He chewed his cigar, and there was gloom on his face. This should have been a week of large receipts, but the outlook was unpromising.
Miss Vavasour was rendered additionally nervous by the fact that she had not had time to learn the lines. She advanced constrainedly, and said in a timid voice—
"'We are alone at last! Oh rapture!'"
"Speak up, my dear!" said Mr. Quisby. "Say it as if you meant it. 'Rapture!' Do a bit of a caper there, be fetching!"