"Tell me more about the tableaux, Jack," said Hughie hastily, as Mrs. Leroy accelerated her ritualistic progeny's departure upstairs. "They're spendin' lashings of money on them. Won't make a farthing profit, I don't suppose; but the show should be all right. They're getting a 'pro.' down to stage-manage 'em." "My word, they are going it! Hallo, Joey!" Miss Gaymer's entrance brought theatrical conversation up to fever heat; and for the rest of the meal, and indeed for the next few days, Hughie lived and breathed in a world composed of rickety scenery, refractory pulleys, and hot size, inhabited by people who were always talking, usually cross, and most intermittent in their feeding-times. One afternoon Joan took him down to the Hall, ostensibly as a companion, in reality to shift some large flats of scenery, too wide for feminine arms to span. Captain Leroy had already offered himself in that capacity, but his services had been brutally declined, on the ground that the scenery was not concave. "The programmes are being printed to-day. We are going to have the tableaux in the first half," Joan rattled on, as they walked through the plantations. "Well-known pictures, you know. Some of them are perfectly lovely. I am in three," she added, rather naïvely. Hughie asked for details. "Well, the first one is to be The Mirror of Venus--a lot of girls looking into a pool." "Are you in that?" "Not much! _That_ is for all the riff-raff who have crowded in without being invited--the Mellishes, and the Crumfords, and the Joblings. (You know the lot!) There's another tableau for their men: _such_ horrors, my dear! But that disposes of them for Part One: they don't have to appear again until the waxworks. Then there's a perfectly sweet one--The Gambler's Wife." "Who is she to be?" "Sylvia Tarrant. She sits under a tree in an old garden, looking sad," gabbled Joan without pausing, "while her husband gambles with some other men on the lawn behind. You'll cry! I come after that--Two Strings to her Bow. A girl walking arm-in-arm with two men. She looks quite pleased with herself: the men have both got camelious hump." "Who are they?" "It's not quite settled yet. I told them they could fight it out among themselves. I expect it will be Binks and Cherub, though. But they must decide soon, because time is getting on, and Mr. Haliburton says--" "Who?" "Mr. Haliburton." "Haliburton?" said Hughie, stopping short. "Yes. Didn't you know? He is stage-managing us. He came down this morning." "Is he staying in the house?" was Hughie's next question. "No: we couldn't get him in. He's putting up at The Bull, in the village," said Joan. "I wish we could have found room for him," she added, with intention. She knew that most men neither loved Mr. Haliburton nor approved of their girl friends becoming intimate with him; and this alone was quite sufficient to predispose her in that misjudged hero's favour.