At the top of the staircase the piled-up side-scenes made so many ways and angles that Kate had to keep close to Dick for fear of getting lost. However, at last they arrived in the wings, where gaslights were burning blankly on the whitewashed walls. A crowd of loud-voiced, perspiring girls in short fancy petticoats and with bare necks and arms, pushed their way towards the mysterious and ladder-like staircases and scrambled up them. Ange Pitou had taken off his cocked hat and was sharing a pint of beer with Clairette. It being her turn to drink, she said: 'Noe, hold my skirts in, there's a dear; this beer plays the devil with white satin.' 'It isn't on your skirts it will go if you spill it,' Ange replied, 'but into your bosom. Stop a second, and I'll give the bottom of the pot a wipe, then you'll be all right.' In the meanwhile Pomponet and La Rivodière were engaged in a violent quarrel. 'Just you understand,' shouted Mortimer: 'if you want to do any clowning you'd better fill your wig with sawdust. It had better be stuffed with something.' This sally was received with smacks of approbation from a circle of supers, who were waiting in the hopes of hearing some spirited dialogue. 'Clowning! And what can you do? I suppose your line is the legitimate. Go and play Don John again, and you'll read us the notices in the morning.' 'Notices ... talking of notices, you never had one, except one to quit from your landlady, poor woman!' replied Mortimer in his most nasal intonation of voice. Enchanted at this witticism, the supers laughed, and poor Dubois would have been utterly done for if Dick had not interposed. 'What do you think, dear?' he said, drawing her aside; 'shall I go and make my change now? I don't come on till the end of the act, and we'll be able to talk without interruption till then.' She had expected him to explain the rights and wrongs of that terrible quarrel that so providentially had passed off without bloodshed, and he seemed to have forgotten all about it. 'But those two gentlemen--the actors--what will happen? Are they going to go away?' 'Lord, no! of course it is riling to have a fellow mugging behind you with his wig when you're speaking, but one must go in for a bit of extra clowning on Saturday night.' All this was Greek to her, and before she could ask Dick to explain he had darted down a passage. When he was with her it was well enough, but the moment his protection was withdrawn all her old fears returned to her. She did not know where to stand. The scene-shifters had come to carry away the scenes that were piled up in her corner, and one of the huge slips had nearly fallen on her. A troop of girls in single coloured gowns and poke bonnets had stopped to stare at her. She remembered their appearance from Thursday, but she had not seen their vulgar, everyday eyes, nor heard until now their coarse, everyday laughs and jokes. Amid this group Lange, fat and lumpy, perorated.