“My next place will, I hope, be that of _Groom_. And after that——” “Don’t puzzle the child so!” Lady Muriel interrupted. “What nonsense you talk!” “—after that,” Eric persisted, “I hope to obtain the situation of _Housekeeper_, which—_Fourth Act!_” he proclaimed, with a sudden change of tone. “Lights turned up. Red lights. Green lights. Distant rumble heard. Enter a passenger-train!” And in another minute the train drew up alongside of the platform, and a stream of passengers began to flow out from the booking office and waiting-rooms. “Did you ever make _real_ life into a drama?” said the Earl. “Now just try. I’ve often amused myself that way. Consider this platform as our stage. Good entrances and exits on _both_ sides, you see. Capital background scene: real engine moving up and down. All this bustle, and people passing to and fro, must have been most carefully rehearsed! How naturally they do it! With never a glance at the audience! And every grouping is quite fresh, you see. No repetition!” It really was admirable, as soon as I began to enter into it from this point of view. Even a porter passing, with a barrow piled with luggage, seemed so realistic that one was tempted to applaud. He was followed by an angry mother, with hot red face, dragging along two screaming children, and calling, to some one behind, “John! Come on!” Enter John, very meek, very silent, and loaded with parcels. And he was followed, in his turn, by a frightened little nursemaid, carrying a fat baby, also screaming. All the children screamed. “Capital byplay!” said the old man aside. “Did you notice the nursemaid’s look of terror? It was simply _perfect_!” “You have struck quite a new vein,” I said. “To most of us Life and its pleasures seem like a mine that is nearly worked out.” “Worked out!” exclaimed the Earl. “For any one with true dramatic instincts, it is only the Overture that is ended! The real treat has yet to begin. You go to a theatre, and pay your ten shillings for a stall, and what do you get for your money? Perhaps it’s a dialogue between a couple of farmers—unnatural in their overdone caricature of farmers’ dress—more unnatural in their constrained attitudes and gestures—most unnatural in their attempts at ease and geniality in their talk. Go instead and take a seat in a third-class railway-carriage, and you’ll get the same dialogue done _to the life_! Front-seats—no orchestra to block the view—and nothing to pay!” “Which reminds me,” said Eric. “There is nothing to pay on receiving a telegram! Shall we enquire for one?” And he and Lady Muriel strolled off in the direction of the Telegraph-Office. “I wonder if Shakespeare had that thought in his mind,” I said, “when he wrote ‘All the world’s a stage’?” The old man sighed. “And so it is,” he said, “look at it as you will. Life is indeed a drama; a drama with but few _encores_—and no _bouquets_!” he added dreamily. “We spend one half of it in regretting the things we did in the other half!”