"Hey, Pottle," he bellowed, "why don't you do something instead of standing there grinning like a baboon?"
Thus charged, Mr. Pottle's toga-clad figure came nimbly from the wings, to great applause, and seized Agnes by the bridle. Pottle tugged lustily. Agnes smiled and did not give way an inch.
"Send for Matt Runkle," hissed Mr. Gulick, Junior.
"Send for Matt Runkle," echoed Mr. Pottle.
"Send for Matt Runkle," cried voices in the audience.
"He's home in bed," wailed Mrs. Pottle from the wings.
"Get one of the Runkle kids," shouted Mr. Pottle, seeking to arouse Agnes with kicks of his sandal-shod feet.
Little Etta Runkle, partly clad in the tinsel and cheese-cloth of a violet, and partly in her everyday underwear, was fetched from a dressing room. She was a bright child and sensed the situation as soon as it had been explained to her twice.
"Oh," she said, "Pa always says Agnes won't start unless you clink two milk bottles together."
The audience was calling forth suggestions to Paul Revere, astride, and Pottle, on foot. They included a bonfire beneath Agnes, and dynamite. Even the rock-bound face of old Felix Winterbottom, in the depths of the box, showed the vestige of a crease that might, with a little imagination, be considered the start of a smile.