When I came to, my first instinct was one of pure self-preservation and I asked for food. Outside, the people were crushing into the pit of the theatre, and by the time I had eaten about a loaf and half a Dutch cheese, and drunk some weak brandy-and-water, which the landlord of the public-house very kindly and humanely insisted upon my doing, the pit was full—not even standing room remained. It was rather sad in a way; but I felt less for the frightful disappointment, after waiting all those hours, than for the debt I owed the merciful men who had rescued me. Of course I didn’t know who they might be and, in any case, it was impossible to wait there till midnight, on the off-chance of seeing them after the play was over and thanking them gratefully. I could have kicked myself over it, because for a chap nearly six feet high, about to join the London Athletic Club and going to be an actor some day and so on—for such a chap, with his way to make in the world, to go into a crowd and faint, like a footling schoolgirl who cuts her finger—it was right bang off, as they say. I felt fearfully downcast about it, because it looked to me as if my career might just as well be closed there and then: but the kind landlord rather cheered me up. He said: “You needn’t take on like that. No doubt you’ve outgrown your strength. It’s nothing at all. The air out there in these crushes would choke a crow. It’s the commonest thing in the world for people to be dragged out and shot in that door.” “Women, I dare say—not men.” “Women—and boys,” he answered. “And what d’you call yourself?” “Well, I’m a man, I suppose,” I replied. “I’m earning my own living, anyway.” “So did I—afore I was ten years old, my bold hero!” said the landlord. He talked to me, while I ate my bread and cheese, and presently advised me to take a cab and drive home; but this I scorned to do, being perfectly fit again. I said I hoped to see him once more some day and he only took sixpence for all my refreshment. He was a good man and I felt jolly obliged to him—especially when he told me that my faint was not a disgrace in itself, but more in the nature of a misfortune. I walked home and said nothing about this unfortunate event; but merely told Aunt Augusta that I had not been able to get into the Lyceum, which was the strict truth and no more. For if I had revealed to her about fainting she would have fussed me to death and very likely made me go to Harley Street in grim earnest and not merely as a spectator of that famous spot.