"It would do me good to live with you, if we were on tour together," said Miss Forbes cheerfully; "you'd keep my pecker up, I think. I loathe sharing diggings with another girl, as a rule—one always quarrels with her, and, with the same bedroom, one has nowhere to go and cry. After they've been in the profession a few years they don't talk like you. Not that there's really much in it," she added with a sigh. "To set your teeth and work morning, noon, and night sounds very fine, but what does it amount to? It means you'd get two-ten a week, and study leading business on the quiet till you thought you were as good as Ellen Terry. But if nobody made you an offer, what then?"
"You mean it's possible to be really clever, and yet not to come to the front?" asked Mamie earnestly.
"How can you come to the front if no one gives you the opportunity? You may be liked where you are—in what you're doing—but you can't play lead in London unless a London manager offers you an engagement to play lead, can you? You can't make him! Do you suppose the only clever actresses alive are those who're known? Besides, if leading business is what you are thinking of, I don't believe you've the physique for it; you don't look strong enough. I should have thought light comedy was more your line."
"It isn't. If I'm meant for anything, it's for drama, and—and tragedy. But I'd begin in the smallest way and be grateful. The ideas I had when I came to London have been knocked out of me—and they were moderate enough, too! I'd begin by saying that the 'dinner was ready.' Surely it can't be so difficult to get an opening like that, if one knows how to set about it?"
"Well, look here, my dear. I played Prince Arthur with Sullivan when I was nine, as I tell you, and I've been in the profession ever since. But I've been out of an engagement for four months now; all I could save out of my last screw has gone in bus fares and stamps—and my people haven't got any more money than they know how to spend. If an engagement to announce the dinner had been offered me to-day, I'd have taken it and I'd be going back to Notting Hill happy."
"I'm awfully sorry," said Mamie sympathetically. "Shall we have another muffin?"
"No, I don't want any more, thanks. But you've no idea what a business it is! I've got talent and experience, and I'm not bad-looking, and yet you see how I've got to struggle. One is always too late everywhere. I was at the Queen's this morning. There are always any number of small parts in the Queen's things, you know, and I thought there might be a chance for The Pride of the Troop. They'd got everybody except the extra ladies. By the way, you might try to get on at the Queen's as an extra, if you like. With your appearance you'd have a very good chance, I should say."
Mamie felt her heart stirring feverishly. "Do you mean it?" she asked. "What are 'extras'—you don't mean 'supers'?"
"Oh, they're better than supers—different class, you know. Of course they've nothing to say, except in chorus. They come on in the race-course scene and the ball-room and look nice. They wear swagger frocks—the management finds their dresses—and are supposed to murmur, and laugh, and act in dumb-show in the background. You know! They're frightful fools—a girl who could act a bit would stand out among extra ladies like a Bernhardt at the Ladbroke Hall."
"If they'd take me," said Mamie, clasping her hands; "if they'd only take me! Do you really think they will?"