There were other dresses, very much bespangled and be-jewelled, and pasteboard helmets and crowns of priceless value, and masks that had had a hard life of it, being dented here and bulged there and puffed up and bunged up in tender places, worse than any prizefighter's face after the severest encounter. A donkey's head and shoulders hung immediately above me, and by its side the plaster cast of a face without the slightest expression in it, and which is popularly supposed to represent an important branch of the histrionic art. Whichever way I turned, these and a hundred other strange articles most incongruously mixed together met my gaze. 'Well, what do you think of us?' asked Miss West. 'We're a queer bunch, ain't we?' 'It's a strange place,' I said, thinking it best to avoid personalities. 'I never saw anything like it.' 'We're a theatrical family, my dear,' said Miss West complacently, 'born in the profession every one of us. Are you fond of theatres?' As a matter of fact, I had only been twice to a theatre, but it was a place of enchantment to me, and I said as much to Miss West. 'Ah!' she mused. 'It looks so from the front, I daresay; and a good job for us that it does. But it is bright, and it _does_ carry you away.' A familiar voice behind the curtain caused a diversion, and I turned eagerly in that direction. Miss West gave me another of her sharp looks. 'Don't you wish you had eyes in your ears?' she said. 'You're one of the bashful ones, I can see. Could you play the part of the Bashful Lover do you think?' (This question was accompanied by a significant dig in the ribs and a merry laugh.) 'I don't think,' I stammered, very red and confused, 'that I should ever be able to act.' 'Not _that_ part!' exclaimed my good-natured tormentor. 'Well, then, you _could_ play "The Good-for-nothing."' Which was an allusion I did not at all understand. Miss West proceeded: 'All you've got to do, my dear, is to stick to nature. Turk gets mad with me when I tell him that. "Stick to nature!" he cries. "Why, then every fool could act." I say to him, every fool _could_ act if he stuck to nature. Then he rolls his eyes and glares, does Turk.' 'Why does he do that?' I inquire. 'He plays the heavy villains, my dear, at the Royal Columbia Theatre; and what's a heavy villain without his glare? You should see him in _The Will and the Way!_ It's a sight.' 'I should like to see him; but you haven't told me who Turk is.' 'Turk is my brother.' 'He is not here?' I ask, with another glance at the curtain. 'Oh, no; he is playing a new part to-night Poor Turk! the new school of acting depresses him. Say, O.' 'O,' I said, with a smile. 'Ah, you should hear Turk say it! It would fill a large page. Do you remember when you first learnt to write?' 'Yes.'