“Oh, is it? Which cue?” asked the mufflered individual who was about to impersonate mirth.
“Why, so and so——”
“What page is that?”
“Twenty-three.”
Whereupon the great Dan—for it was really Dan himself—proceeded to find number twenty-three, and immediately began reading a lecture to the goose in mock solemn vein, when some one cried:
“No, no, man, that’s not it, you are reading page thirteen; we’ve done that.”
“Oh, have we? Thank you. Ah yes, here it is.”
“That’s my part,” exclaimed Herbert Campbell. “Your cue is——”
“Oh, is it?” and poor bewildered, unhappy-looking Dan made another and happier attempt.
It had often previously occurred to me that Dan Leno gagged his own part to suit himself every night—and really after this rehearsal the supposition seemed founded on fact, for apparently he did not know one word of anything nine days before the production of Mother Goose, in which he afterwards made such a brilliant hit.