"When?"
"When?"
"Last night."
"Last night."
Mr. Miller waved his hands in a gesture of divine despair, spun round, darted up the aisle, turned, and bounded back.
"What can I do?" he wailed. "My hands are tied! I am hampered! I am handicapped! We open in two weeks and every day I find somebody new in the company to upset everything I have done. I shall go to Mr. Goble and ask to be released from my contract. I shall.... Come along, come along, come along now!" he broke off suddenly. "Why are we wasting time? The whole number once more. The whole number once more from the beginning!"
The young man tottered back to his gentlemanly colleagues, running a finger in an agitated manner round the inside of his collar. He was not used to this sort of thing. In a large experience of amateur theatricals he had never encountered anything like it. In the breathing-space afforded by the singing of the first verse and refrain by the lady who played the heroine of "The Rose of America," he found time to make an enquiry of the artist on his right.
"I say! Is he always like this?"
"Who? Johnny?"
"The sportsman with the hair that turned white in a single night. The barker on the sky-line. Does he often get the wind up like this?"