"What Management?" cried the low comedian. "'Ave _you_ left off being manager all of a sudden?" "Ladies and gentlemen, as you're all aware, the Management is a Syndicate," Mr. Quisby proceeded with difficulty. "If this was _my_ crowd, I should talk very different. Do you know what I should say if this was my crowd? I should say, 'Between you and I, I'm a bit doubtful of the piece--that's straight!--but I've got a first-class company of artists, and by George I mean to keep 'em!' I should say, 'If I can't pull this piece together, then I'll cast the whole blessed crowd for another!' That's what I should say if _I_ was manager. But I'm not. No, I'm one of you. We're all in the same boat. I'm engaged at a salary, like yourselves. Still"--he smeared the perspiration round his lying lips--"still it's always darkest before dawn. There's a silver lining to every cloud, and we may find as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. Mr. Omee won't have the piece, and--er--you're all to clear your props out of the theatre first thing in the morning; but there are plenty of other theatres in the kingdom! We must stick together. Where there's a will, there's a way! We must stick together, like Englishmen in the hour of trouble all the world over, and--er, er--be loyal to the show! Ladies and gentlemen--Boys and girls!--Mr. Omee is waiting to see me in his office. That's all." "Well, he couldn't have spoken any fairer," many of the poor, wretched women said to one another as they lagged through the forsaken streets. CHAPTER XV Indeed it was Mr. Omee whom the Company censured--Mr. Omee who had been inhuman enough to banish a worthless performance from his theatre. "Never," said Miss Jinman, "in all her experience had she known artists to be so grossly insulted." Mr. Quisby's position might be ambiguous, Mr. Quisby might be shirking his responsibilities; not to put too fine a point upon it, Mr. Quisby might be a rogue. But he had paid them compliments--and Mr. Omee had shut his doors against them. Mr. Omee was the innocent person whom they execrated and reviled. In the quarter where the "professional apartments" of Blithepoint are most numerous, the landladies looked anxious in the morning. On every doorstep in Corporation Road, and half way down Alfreton Terrace, the news was known by nine o'clock. The lodgers were obliged to fence with searching questions at breakfast, and many of the houris heating curling-tongs in the parlour-fire were told that it would "save trouble if they got in their dinner themselves."