It was a miserably cold morning, and Clytemnestra sat in a thick ulster with a bull-dog on her knees, till it was time for her to appear, and watched a curiously dressed chorus of Argive elders headed by Reggie in flannels and a blazer, for he had been playing tennis, manœuvre round a stage director, whom a vivid imagination construed into an altar. Two other stage directors quarrelled with each other in the background, till the conductor who was directing the chorus asked them to be quiet. Thus he secured for himself the hostility of all the stage directors, who resented the attack made on their class, and who lay in wait to contradict him rudely on the earliest possible occasion. The Babe, meantime, had wandered off the stage into the wings, in search of a fire, and Mr. Sykes, left to himself, recognised Reggie as a friend among the heterogeneous elders, and trotted across to him, wheezing pathetically. The conductor had stopped the chorus in order to point out some mistake the tenors had made, and was singing the passage himself in a fruity falsetto voice, and Reggie, who was a bass, was patting Sykes, when the voice of one of the hostile stage directors broke in-- “The rehearsal,” he said firmly, “will proceed when the leader of the Argive elders has quite finished playing with a bull-dog. Please send the bull-dog out of the theatre.” “It’s Clytemnestra’s,” said Reggie. The Babe re-appeared at this moment. “Where’s Bill?” he asked. “Oh, there he is. Come here, darling. Oh, are you waiting for me?” The conductor laid down his baton. “Settle it among yourselves,” he said, “and tell me when you are ready. I may remark that I am very busy, and that my time is not my own.” Mr. Sykes meantime was sniffing suspiciously round the heels of the altar, and the altar was getting visibly nervous. The Babe supposing that his entrance had come, began reciting his first lines in a loud voice, and the stage directors and the conductors made common cause against him. “If Clytemnestra would kindly be quiet,” said one. “And take away her horrible dog,” put in the altar. “The chorus might proceed,” shouted the conductor. The Babe with a look of injured innocence on his face retired to his chair, followed reluctantly by Sykes, who was not satisfied about the altar, and the practice went on.