“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 skyline. Does he often get the wind up like this?”
His colleague smiled tolerantly.
“Why, that’s nothing!” he replied. “Wait till you see him really cut loose! That was just a gentle whisper!”
“My God!” said the newcomer, staring into a bleak future. The leading lady came to the end of her refrain, and the gentlemen of the ensemble, who had been hanging about up-stage, began to curvet nimbly down towards her in a double line; the new arrival, with an eye on his nearest neighbor, endeavouring to curvet as nimbly as the others. A clapping of hands from the dark auditorium indicated—inappropriately—that he had failed to do so. Mr Miller could be perceived—dimly—with all his fingers entwined in his hair.
“Clear the stage!” yelled Mr Miller. “Not you!” he shouted, as the latest addition to the company began to drift off with the others. “You stay!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I shall have to teach you the steps by yourself, or we shall get nowhere. Go on-stage. Start the music again, Mr Saltzburg. Now, when the refrain begins, come down. Gracefully! Gracefully!”
The young man, pink but determined, began to come down gracefully. And it was while he was thus occupied that Jill and Nelly Bryant, entering the wings which were beginning to fill up as eleven o’clock approached, saw him.