The amount of talk they got through in these early days of their friendship was stupendous. It helped to relieve the harassing search after employment and its invariable ill-success. One morning, three weeks after their first meeting, Maggy sprang out of bed to gather up two letters which their landlady had pushed under the door. On the flaps were inspiring words in red lettering. "Pall Mall Theater! Hooroo! One for each of us!" she cried, and danced about in her nightdress. Alexandra, behind an improvised screen formed of a shawl over the towel rail, was having her morning bath in a zinc tub of inadequate size. "Open mine," she called. "I’m wet." She waited anxiously. There came the sound of tearing paper and then Maggy’s voice, raised excitedly: "Pull that old shawl down, Lexie! If you don’t practise on me you’ll die of shyness and no clothes at the Pall Mall. We’re engaged! Rehearsal Thursday. Eleven o’clock!" IV It was past one o’clock. For over two hours without a pause the chorus had been going through their "business" in the new play with the reiteration that exasperates the teacher and the taught. The girls had relapsed into sulkiness, the stage-manager’s temper was ruffled. Even the pianist in the O.P. corner by the footlights felt the reaction. His hands rested on the keys without energy. Powell, the stage-manager, faced the forty girls standing in a semi-circle, three-deep. The majority of them were dressed in the ultra-fashionable style of the moment, some very expensively, a few with taste. The exceptions were Maggy and Alexandra. He knew they were all tired and rebellious; but he was concerned only with their recalcitrant feet. "Now then, girls. Once more." The pianist’s hands came down heavily on the opening chords of a dance movement. "La-la-la—da-di-dum—point! Step it out. Don’t mince!" A tall girl, gorgeously arrayed, brought the dance to a stop by leaving her position in the front row. "I’m not going to stick here all day," she announced defiantly. "I’m lunching with my boy, and he won’t wait." "Get back to your place, Miss Mortimer," snapped Powell. "Not me. I’m going." As she began to cross the stage on her way out a voice came from the depths of the auditorium: "Miss Mortimer, we’re not concerned with your private appointments. If they’re to interfere with your work here you can look for another engagement somewhere else." The show-girl glanced in the direction of the voice and shrugged. "Mean you’ll fire me, Mr. De Freyne? Well, I don’t care. Pa’s rich!"