“My dear,” said Mr. Leahurst, mildly and forlornly, “you are doing your best. It’s not your fault if you don’t quite hit it off.”
This made Miss Millbank exceedingly angry. “What?” she said. “Don’t you like my reading?”
“So far as I have been able to ascertain,” said Mr. Leahurst, “it’s a Marian D’Arcy part. Well, you aren’t Marian, are you?”
The rehearsal went on again, and as Mr. Leahurst presently returned to his seat beside Emmie, she took the opportunity of telling him that, in the opinion of herself and Alwyn, the girl engaged for the lady’s-maid was even worse than Miss Millbank.
Mr. Leahurst blinked his eyelids and very slowly lit a cigarette.
“Think so?” he said, after a pause.
“I do really.”
“I dessay you’re right.”
This Miss Yates, the incompetent and affected lady’s-maid, came into the stalls after a little while and talked to him in a friendly chaffing manner. But he did not stay; he got up and went off to some sacred managerial room. The young lady flopped down in a row of stalls at a little distance from Emmie, and occupied herself with a tiny gold-framed mirror and a lip-stick. She had brought with her also a large cardboard hat-box. Holding the box on high, she called to a pallid young man.