“And what shall you give us last,” I said, “Shakespeare?” “No, myself,” he answered. The word was ‘innocent,’ which Greensmith divided thus: ‘Inn,’ ‘No!’ ‘Scent.’ I really forget all the details, and they don’t signify now; but my part and Millicent’s stick in my memory, as well they may. Why, I shall never quite understand, but Greensmith arranged that Millicent and I should be lovers, that I should send her a letter proposing marriage in the first scene, that she should forward me an answer refusing my hand in the second. How little the idiot thought of what he was doing! What absurd and Satanic conceit he had, not to see the horrid jeopardy to his own private arrangements involved by this manner of planning the charade! I chucked up my part four times during the first rehearsal; I chucked it up thirteen times in all before the night. Greensmith was entirely responsible for the chucking; Millicent’s marvellous tact so worked upon me that, against my better judgment, I resumed the character. He said once: “If you’ll only be natural, old man, you’re all right. The part fits you like a glove. It was written for you.” Now, seeing that the character I impersonated was a silly fool who didn’t know his own mind, and fancied he was not in love when he was all the time, this seemed hard enough to bear without being called ‘old man’ by a person like Greensmith. So I threw up the part again. That was the tenth time, or it may have been the eleventh. Anyway, Millicent so far prevailed with me that I found myself acting on the night. The first week in January it was; and the concern being in mediæval times, we were all got up in costume. Greensmith wanted to have everything archæologically correct, but they weren’t by long chalks, because everybody would wear what he liked, and the girls too. We had a stage and scenery out from Birmingham, and a man to paint our faces, and another to do limelight effects on us. I remember just at the last minute Greensmith asking me if I thought the big audience which crammed General Warne’s hall would call for the author. I said: “If they do, you can get away through the hall window and hide in the park.” This stung him into retort. He said: “There’ll only be one target for brickbats, my boy, while you’re on the stage. Your solitary chance is to speak my words. I don’t believe you know your part a little bit.” “I’m going to put some fun of my own into it,” I said, just to get his wool off.