“Lord, she’ll be a corker in a year or two’s time.” “Year or two’s time. Hot stuff _now_ if you ask me.” Perhaps she was. But she had saved the situation. She had averted a panic. She had saved the loss of life inseparable from a theatre stampede. And she knew it. As the audience settled down to be amused by her, or by the next turn for whom she had prepared the way, she gave the conductor the cue for the coda, and, with a final stamp of those inspired feet, she leapt into the wings, where the rest of the Casinos awaited her. She was gasping, with drawn face. Two light blue stockings, robbed of their garters, were slipping half-way down her delicately rounded legs. The dust from the stage had gathered on her warm arms. She was plainly “all gone.” But there was a light in her eye and that in her manner that shrieked: “What did I tell you?” The manager came to meet her. “You glorious kid!” Pertly she looked up at him. “Yes, ain’t I? Going to push a boat out for me?” “Push a boat out?” “Yes; I’m dry after that. Mine’s a claret and soda.” He rumpled his hair to bring it into keeping with his unhappy evening-clothes. He gestured operatically. He embraced the universe. He addressed the eternal verities. “I’m damned,” he exclaimed, “I’m damned if I don’t book that kid for six months.” * * * * * He kept his promise. She was booked at three pounds per week for six months, and she thought she was in heaven. She had never dreamed that there was so much money in the world. Then there was a hurrying to and fro in Acacia Grove. She had to work up an act of her own and provide her own make-up box and dresses. In the former she was assisted by Madame Gilibert and the _chef d’orchestre_; in the latter by Mumdear and the whole female population of Acacia Grove. Band parts had to be arranged and collected, each instrumental part secured in a neat stiff cover, engraved in gilt letters: GINA _Piccolo_ and GINA _Cornet_ Madame Gilibert sent invitation cards to all managers, and even booked one of the inch-square spaces on the back cover of _The Encore_, where Gina’s picture duly appeared: GINA _The Marvellous Child Dancer_ The Pocket Kate Vaughan All com. Gilibert amid that bewildering array of faces which makes the cover of that journal so distinctive on the bookstall and so deeply interesting to the student of physiognomy and of human nature. So she started as a gay fifth-rate vaudevillian.