"Yes; I couldn't live on your lectures," Prince Prettypet said, still in the same resentful tone. "I couldn't fritter away the little capital I had when mamma died, and then wait for starvation. I had no useful accomplishments. I could only recite--_Athalie_." "But surely your aunt--" "Is a fiction. Had she been a fact it would have been all the same. I had had enough of mamma. No more leading-strings!" "Lucy! And you wept over her so in your letters?" "Crocodile's tears. Heavens, are women to have no lives of their own?" "Oh, why did you not write to me of your difficulties?" he groaned. "I would have come over and fetched you--we would have borne poverty together." "Yes," the Prince said mockingly. "''E was werry good to me, 'e was.' Do you think I could submit to government by a prig?" He started as if stung. The little tinselled figure, looking taller in its swashbuckling habits, stared at him defiantly. "Tell me," he said brokenly, "have you made a living?" "No. If truth must be told, Lucy Gray--docked at the tail, sir--hasn't made enough to keep Lucy Grayling in theatrical costumes. I got plenty of kudos in the Provinces, but two of my managers were bogus." "Yes?" he said vaguely. "No treasury, don't you know? Ghost didn't walk. No oof, rhino, shiners, coin, cash, salary!" "Do I understand you have travelled about the country by yourself?" "By myself! What, in a company? You've picked up Irish in America. Ha! ha! ha!" "You know what I mean, Lucy." It seemed strange to call this new person Lucy, but "Miss Grayling" would have sounded just as strange. "Oh, there was sure to be a married lady--with her husband--in the troupe, poor thing!" The Prince had a roguish twinkle in the eye. "And surely I am old enough to take care of myself. Still, I felt you wouldn't like it. That's why I was anxious to get a London appearance--if only in East-end pantomime. The money's safe, and your notices are more valuable. I only want a show to take the town. I do hope George won't disappoint me. I thought you were he." "Who is George?" he said slowly, as if in pain. The shrill clamour of the bell answered him. "There he is!" said the Prince joyfully. "George is only Georgie Spanner, stage-manager of the Oriental. I have been besieging him for two days. Bella Bright, who had to play Prince Prettypet, has gone and eloped with the property-man, and as soon as I heard of it, I got a letter of introduction to Georgie Spanner, and he said I was too little, and I said that was nonsense--that I had played in burlesque at Eastbourne--Come in!" [Illustration: THE STAGE-MANAGER.] "Are you at home, miss?" said the maid, putting her head inside the door. "Certainly, Fanny. That's Mr. Spanner I told you of--" The girl's head looked puzzled as it removed itself. "And so he said if I would put my things on, he would try and run down for an hour this evening, and see if I looked the part." "And couldn't all that be done at the theatre?"