"She's a awful cute little dancer," Birdie recommended. "She knows all the steps in the Red-Bird chorus. I taught her when I was here before. If you'd say a word to Mr. Pulatki he might try her out at rehearsal this morning." Nance held her breath while Reeser's quizzical eyes continued to study her. "All right!" he said suddenly. "She's pretty young, but we'll see what she can do. Now clear the way. Lower that drop a little, boys. Hurry up with the second set." The girls scurried away to the wings where they found a narrow space in which Nance was put through the half-forgotten steps. "It's all in the team work," Birdie explained. "You do exactly what I do, and don't let old Spagetti rattle you. He goes crazy at every rehearsal. Keep time and grin. That's all there is to it" "I can do it!" cried Nance radiantly. "It's easy as breathing!" But it proved more difficult than she thought, when in a pair of property bloomers she found herself one of a party of girls advancing, retreating, and wheeling at the arbitrary command of an excitable little man in his shirt-sleeves, who hammered out the time on a rattling piano. Pulatki was a nervous Italian with long black hair and a drooping black mustache, both of which suffered harsh treatment in moments of dramatic frenzy. His business in life was to make forty lively, mischievous girls move and sing as one. The sin of sins to him, in a chorus girl, was individuality. "You! new girl!" he screamed the moment he spied Nance, "you are out of ze line. Hold your shoulders stiff, so! Ah, _Dio!_ Can you not move wiz ze rest?" The girls started a stately number, diagonal from down-stage left toward upper center. "Hold ze pose!" shouted the director. Then he scrambled up on the stage and seized Nance roughly by the arm. "You are too quick!" he shouted. "You are too restless. We do not want that you do a solo! Can you not keep your person still?" And to Nance's untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that she made evoked a storm from the director. Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from the wings. "Here's a howdy-do!" he exclaimed. "Flossy Pierson's sprained her ankle." "Ze leetle bear?" shrieked Pulatki; then he clutched his hair in both hands and raved maledictions on the absent Flossy. "See here," said Reeser, "this is no time for fireworks. Who in the devil is to take her place?" "Zere is none," wailed Pulatki. "She make her own part. I cannot teach it." "It's not the part that bothers me," said Reeser. "It's the costume. We've got to take whoever will fit it. Who's the smallest girl in the chorus?" The eyes of the two men swept the double column of girls until they rested on the one head that, despite its high coiffure, failed to achieve the average height. "Come here!" called Reeser to Nance.