The breakfast-table would then be pushed out of the way and the entrance rehearsed. Dick seemed never to weary, and the run was practised over and over again. Coming home from the theatre at night, it was always a question of this effect and that effect; of whether Leslie might not have scored a point if she had accentuated the lifting of her skirt in the famous song. That was, as Dick declared, the 'number of grip'; and often, at two o'clock in the morning, just as she was getting into bed, Kate, in her chemise, would begin to sing: '"Look at me here! look at me there! Criticize me everywhere! From head to feet I am most sweet, And most perfect and complete."' There was a scene in the first act in which Serpolette had to run screaming with laughter away from her cross old uncle, Gaspard, and dodge him, hiding behind the Baillie, and to do this effectively required a certain _chic_, a gaiety, which Kate did not seem able to summon up; and this was the weak place in her rendering of the part. 'You're all right for a minute, and then you sober down into a Germaine,' Dick would say, at the end of a long and critical conversation. The business she learned to 'parrot.' Dick taught her the gestures and the intonations of voice to be used, and when she had mastered these Dick said he would back her to go through the part quite as well as Leslie. Leslie! The word was now constantly in their minds. Would her cold get worse or better? was the question discussed most frequently between Dick, Kate, and Montgomery. Sometimes it was better, sometimes worse; but at the moment of their greatest despondency the welcome news came that she had slipped downstairs and sprained her foot badly. 'Oh, the poor thing!' said Kate; 'I'm so sorry. Had I known that was----' 'Was going to happen you wouldn't have learnt the part,' exclaimed Montgomery, with his loud, vacant laugh. She beat her foot impatiently on the ground, and after a long silence she said, 'I shall go and see her.' 'You'd much better run through your music with Montgomery, and don't forget to see the dresser about your dress. And, for God's sake, do try and put a bit of gaiety into the part. Serpolette is a bit of a romp, you know.' 'Try to put a bit of gaiety into the part,' rang in Kate's ears unceasingly. It haunted her as she took in the waist of Leslie's dress, while she leaned over Montgomery's shoulder at the piano or listened to his conversation. He was enthusiastic, and she thought it very pretty of him to say, 'I'm glad to have had a share in your first success. No one ever forgets that--that's sure to be remembered.' It was the nearest thing to a profession of love he had ever made, but she was preoccupied with other thoughts, and had to send him away for a last time to study the dialogue before the glass. 'Try to put a little gaiety into the part. Serpolette is a romp, you know.'