The story proved a weary one; but like a long railway journey it at last drew to an end, and they went upstairs. There they found the ladies yawning and looking at the presents. Kate ran to Dick to ask him to arrange about the music, but Beaumont had been a little before her and had taken Mr. Cox out on the balcony. Bret was not in the room; Leslie did not know the music, and in the face of so many difficulties, Dick's attention soon began to wander, and Kate was left to console the disappointed musician. Once or twice she attempted to renew the subject, but was told that they were all going down to the theatre in half an hour, and that it had better be put off to another time. Montgomery made no answer, but he could not cast off the bitter and malignant thought that haunted him, 'I'm as unfortunate in art as in love.' XX The ebb of the company's prosperity dated from Kate's marriage. Somehow things did not seem to go well after. In the first place the production of _Olivette_ was not a success. Mortimer was drunk, did not know his words, and went 'fluffing all over the shop.' Kate, excited with champagne and compliments, sang the wrong music on one occasion; and to complete their misfortunes, the Liverpool public did not in the least tumble to Miss Beaumont's rendering of the part of the heroine. The gallery thought she was too fat, the papers said she was not sprightly enough, and on Wednesday night the old _Cloches_ had to be put up. By this failure the management sustained a heavy loss. They had laid out a lot of money on dresses, property and scenery, all of which were now useless to them; and the other two operas were beginning to droop and lose their drawing power, having been on the road for the last three years. The country, too, was suffering from a great commercial crisis, and no one cared to go to the theatre. In many of the towns they visited strikes were on, and the people were convulsed with discussions, projects for resistance, and hopes of bettering their condition. Great social problems, the tyranny of capital, and such-like, occupied the minds of men, and there was naturally little taste for the laughing nonchalance of _La Fille de Madame Angot_ or the fooling of the Baillie in the _Cloches_. As forty thousand men had struck work, our band of travelling actors rolled out of Leeds, and they left it bearing with them only a reminiscence of empty benches, and street-corners crowded with idling, sullen-faced men. At Newcastle they were not more fortunate, at Wigan they fared even worse, and at Hull it was equally bad. Gaiety seemed to have fled out of the North; the public-house and the platform drew away the pit and the gallery; the frequenters of the boxes and dress-circle remained at home, to talk around their firesides of their jeopardized fortunes. When the workers grow weary of work a hard time sets in for the sellers of amusement, and the fate of Morton and Cox's Operatic Company proved no exception to the rule.