"Indeed not!" Agnes indignantly denied. "That is an idea more absurd than the fact that Bobby should go into such an enterprise at all. However, since I lay myself open to such a suspicion I shall offer no further objection to going." Bobby looked at her curiously and then he carefully refrained from chuckling, for Aunt Constance, though joking, had told the truth. Instant visions of dazzling sopranos, of mezzos and contraltos, of angelic voices and of vast beauty and exquisite gowning, had flashed in appalling procession before her mental vision. The idea, in the face of the appalling actuality, was so rich that Bobby pursued it no further lest he spoil it, and talked about the weather and equally inane topics the rest of the way. It was not until they had turned into the narrow alley at the side of the Orpheum, and from that to the still more narrow alley at its rear, that the zest of adventure began to make amends to Agnes for certain disagreeable moments of the ride. At the stage door a particularly bewildered-looking man with a rolling eye and a weak jaw, rendered limp and helpless by the polyglot aliens who had flocked upon him, strickenly let them in, to grope their way, amid what seemed an inextricable confusion, but was in reality the perfection of orderliness, upon the dim stage, beyond which stretched, in vast emptiness, the big, black auditorium. Upon the stage, chattering in shrill voices, were the forty members of the company, still in their queer clothing, while down in front, where shaded lights--seeming dull and discouraged amid all the surrounding darkness--streamed upon the music, were the members of the orchestra, chattering just as volubly. The general note was quite different in pitch from the one Bobby had heard that morning, for since he had seen them the members of the organization had been fed, and life looked cheerful. Wandering at a loss among these people, and trying in the dim twilight to find some face that he knew, the ears of Bobby and his party were suddenly assailed by an extremely harsh and penetrating voice which shouted: "Clear!" This was accompanied by a sharp clap from a pair of very broad hands. The chattering suddenly took on a rapid crescendo, ascending a full third in the scale and then dying abruptly in a little high falsetto shriek; and Bobby, with a lady upon either arm, found his little trio immediately alone in the center of the stage, a row of dim footlights cutting off effectually any view into the vast emptiness of the auditorium. "Hey, you; _clear_!" came the harsh voice again, accompanied by another sharp clap of the hands, and a bundle of intense fighting energy bounced out from the right tormentor wing, in the shape of a gaunt, fiercely-mustached and entirely bald man of about forty-five, who appeared perpetually to be in the last stages of distraction.