“You run up your flag, girl!--your flag of red and black, of paint and dye!--that honest craft may know there’s a pirate in these waters!” and, dragging her veil across her face, she left me standing there, divided between the desire to laugh and the desire to cry. A pirate? I was such a harmless, well-meaning, little pirate that even had I shown the flag, and blackened my lashes and rouged my cheeks, I doubt if I should have created a very great panic in the Cleveland shipping--and so, at last, the laugh won; and between laughs I said aloud: “I am a pirate! I am a pirate!” And so a member of the company found me, and paused and looked me gravely over, and, wagging his head desperately, said: “It seems incredible, such meanness in one so young, but you will bear in mind I _saw_ this myself--a girl of sixteen, who knows a good story, takes herself out into a cold, damp hall, and tells this story to herself, and laughs and laughs all to herself, and then wipes her mouth and goes in seriously and sadly to join her defrauded brother and sister artistes. Clara, I wouldn’t have believed it of you!” I had to tell him what I was really laughing at. “Good Lord!” he said, “that was old Mrs. Worden. Do you mean to tell me you don’t know her? She’s a terror, is old Myra! She used to carry this town in her pocket. She was young then, and rich, and they do say Myra was a beauty. Hard to believe that, isn’t it?” “I don’t think so,” I replied. “Her features are really perfect. Her eyes must have been very fine; her hair black, and her figure very graceful.” “Perhaps,” he yawned, “but she has the sharpest tongue and the longest memory in Cleveland. How she does lash some of our public men! You know the rector of Christ Church, the party who abuses theatres so often? Well, one day there was a race between the ancient Myra and the long-winded Reverend. She was overhauling him fast, and he knew it. These doors stood open--theatre doors. He was between the devil and the deep sea, and--well, quite properly, he chose the deep sea, and slid in here, and behind that billboard. Had he only known it, he need not have gone behind that board for shelter, for nothing on earth could induce the ancient dame to enter the door of a theatre; so he would have been safe had he merely stepped inside. As soon as she had passed, he tried to slip out unnoticed, but _I_ was on the spot, I am proud to say, when I was least wanted, and, lifting my hat, I informed him that if he wanted seats he would find the box-office at the head of the stairs. He _glared_ at me, and then I offered to run up and get him a programme of the evening’s performance, but he snorted something about ‘mistaking the entrance,’ and got away. Well,” my companion added, with a self-satisfied look, “if there is anyone in town who has _not_ heard of that chase and escape, it’s not my fault.” “But why,” I asked, “does Mrs. Worden dislike theatres so greatly?”