Mr. Chown had the grace to feel a twinge: she was, beyond a doubt, Pate’s property. But he recovered balance, telling himself very firmly that Pate would mismanage the property; that life was a battlefield and that “Vae Victis” was its motto; that one must live and that if Pate had taken reasonable precautions, he would not have exposed the girl to the marauding Mr. Chown. And, anyhow, Pate was a provincial. He asked her age, and “Twenty-one,” she said brazenly, aware of the trammels of minority. He guessed her eighteen at most, but she wasn’t impossibly twenty-one and he had his reasons for believing her. “You couldn’t be a better age,” he said. “I have some doubt as to what Mr. Pate will say to my proposal of the stage for you.” “Are you going to tell him about it?” she asked in alarm. “I will tell you,” he said, “now. If you come with me to-morrow to London, you can begin at once in a musical comedy on tour.” She gave a gasp. “Oh,” he said, “you wish to hear no more. You are anxious to return to the Drill Hall. You are, perhaps, cold?” He was very cold, but not too cold to play his fish. “Cold? I could listen all night to this.” Mr. Chown envied her the undistinguished cloak she wore: _per ardua ad astra_. “Well,” he said, “it is true that the work I have to offer you is very different from the restrained, the almost caged existence you have been enduring. But you will begin in the chorus. You have stage fright to get over, and all the green sickness of a raw beginner. My friend Hubert Rossiter”--even Mary Ellen had heard of Rossiter--“will take you and I shall see that he passes you on from company to company. Soon you will play small parts, and then leading parts. Possibly, for experience, a pantomime at Christmas. And while you are learning your business in this way you will be paid all the time.” “How much?” she asked promptly. “Exactly what you are worth,” he said. “You won’t starve and I call your attention to this point. I act as your agent and I take a ten per cent commission of your salary. That is all I take, and you will see that it is to my interests that your salary shall be large. If I did not believe that your salary in a very few years will be considerable, I should not be standing bareheaded and without a coat in a Staithley by-street. The train to London leaves at ten in the morning. Am I to take a ticket for you?” “Yes,” she said. “It is a curious fact,” he remarked, “that I do not know your name. Mine is Chown. Lexley Chown.” “Mine’s Mary Ellen Bradshaw,” she said, jettisoning the name of Pate as useless cargo now. “Mary,” he mused. “I think we’ll keep the Mary. But we’ll improve the rest. And now that you and I have settled this between ourselves, when do I see Mr. Pate?” “He’s very busy to-night,” said Mary Ellen, “and the train leaves early to-morrow.”