JIM (_in a rage_), “_I_ don’t know anything about you and your rehearsal! That’s not my business, is it? I do my own work; I don’t do other people’s work! I don’t want to be told how to do my work!” (_Pours forth a flood of impassioned eloquence for the next ten minutes, during which time the hammering is also continued. Complete collapse of STAGE MANAGER, and suspension of rehearsal. Subsequent dryness on the part of JIM._) MAN. WIFE (_when rehearsal is at last resumed_). “Just try back that last bit, will you, for positions?” _The last two or three movements gone over again._ Then: STAGE MAN. “We all three struggle toward door. Stand back, old man! I do not wish to harm thee!--I push you aside. ‘Back, or it will be murder!’--This must be well worked up. ‘Who dares to stay me?’ (_to LOW COMEDY_). “There’ll be a bar to bring you on. You know the business.” LOW COM. (_coming forward_). “’ Shure and I will.’” _Scrape from fiddle._ STAGE MAN. “Well then there’s our struggle.” (_STAGE MANAGER and LOW COMEDY take hold of each other’s shoulders, and turn round_). “I’ll have the book in the left-hand side.” LOW COM. “‘Ah, begorra, shure he’s clane gone; but, be jabers, I’ve got this ‘“ (_holding up an imaginary pocket-book_), “‘and it’s worth a precious deal more than he is.’” STAGE MAN. “End of first act.--Tommy, go and fetch me half a pint of stout.” CHAPTER VI. Scenery and Supers [Illustration: 9067] E had five rehearsals for this play. “What the dickens do they want with with so many?” was the indignant comment of the First Old Woman. “Why, they’ll rehearse it more times than they’ll play it.” I thought five a ridiculously small number at the time, especially when I remembered my amateur days, and the thirty or so rehearsals, nearly all full-dressed ones, required for a short farce; but there came a time when I looked upon two as betokening extraordinary anxiety about a production. In the provinces, I have known a three-act comedy put on without any rehearsal at all, and with half the people not even knowing the patter. “Business” was arranged in whispered consultations, while the play was proceeding, and when things got into a more than usually glorious muddle, one or other of the characters would come off the stage and have a look at the book. As for the prompter, after vainly struggling to keep them to one act at a time, and to dissuade the hero from making love to the wrong girl, he came to the conclusion that he was only in the way, and so went and had a quiet pipe at the stage-door, and refrained from worrying himself further.