The stage and its eccentricities attracted Erb as they attract everyone, and, a licensed person for the evening, he went about through the feverish atmosphere, meeting people who appeared ridiculous as they stood at the side of the stage waiting to go on, but who, as he knew, would look more life-like than life with the footlights intervening. Pimple-faced men, in tweed caps, hidden from the audience, held up unreliable trees; kept a hand on a ladder, which enabled the leading lady to go up and speak to her lover from the casemented upper window of a cottage; ran against each other at every fair opportunity, complaining in hoarse whispers of clumsiness. A boy came holding clusters of shining pewter cans by the handles, and peace was restored amongst the stage hands, but for the folk in evening dress, with unnatural eyes and amazing faces, who stood about ready to go on, there remained the strain of excitement; some of them soliloquised in a corner, whilst others talked in extravagant terms of dispraise concerning the new leading lady, hinting that no doubt she was a very good girl and kind to her mother, but that she could not act, my dear old boy, for nuts, or for toffee, or for apples, or other rewards of a moderate nature. These seemed to be only their private views, for they were discarded when the leading lady came down the ladder, and they then gathered round her and told her that she was playing for all she was worth, that she had managed to extract more from that one scene than her predecessor had obtained from the entire play, and hinting quite plainly that it was a dear and a precious privilege to be playing in the same company with her. Mr. Lawrence Railton brought for the leading lady a wooden chair; a middle-aged bird (who was her dresser) hopped forward bringing a woollen shawl, that had started by being white and still showed some traces of its original intention, to place around her shoulders. “I don’t know,” said Mr. Railton, stretching his arms, when, having been ousted from attendance by others, he had strolled up towards Erb, “I don’t feel much like acting to-night!” “Do you ever?” asked Erb. “It’s wonderful,” went on the young man, “simply and absolutely wonderful the different moods that one goes through, and the effect they have on one’s performance. I go on giving much the same rendering of a part for several nights on end, and, suddenly, I seem to get a flash of inspiration.” “Better language!” recommended Erb. “A flash of inspiration,” said the white whiskered young man with perfect confidence, and keeping his eye on the stage. “It all comes in a moment as it were. And then, by Jove! one can fairly electrify an audience. One sees the house absolutely rise.” “And go out?” asked Erb.