With jealous amazement she viewed the natural ease of the other young ladies in the crowd, and envied them their mellifluous laughter. Earlier in the evening she had listened with awe to the conversation in the dressing-room, and had marked how each, according to her own tale, was usually to be seen in highly important rôles, but being sick of “resting” had accepted a “walk-on” as a “fill-in.” From the way the Christian names of stage celebrities flew about Mary judged them to be well in with the _élite_ of the profession. After a few days she learnt that it was not essential to be personally acquainted with such persons as Julia Neilson or Marie Löhr, before speaking of them as “Julia” or “Marie.” These familiarities intrigued her greatly, and before the week was out she was able to refer to H. B. Irving as “Harry” or Dion Boucicault as “Dot” without the slightest embarrassment. Eliphalet Cardomay was the only person never spoken of by an abbreviation. He was and remained “The Guv’nor.” Mr. Manning, the stage-manager, automatically became “Freddie,” not to be confounded with Fred, which, as everyone knows, was reserved for Fred Terry. “Freddie” was the subject of much conversation, indeed about forty per cent, of the entire output either started with “Freddie is a brick, you know,” or “Freddie is a perfect beast.” Another twenty per cent, was given over to the doings of the call-boy, “that little devil, Sydney,” and the remaining to reminiscences of past successes, or such remarks as: “I feel a perfect rag to-day.” “Have you seen the show at So-and-so?” “My dear, he was perfectly awful!” “There was nothing but paper in the house.” “But I always do love Marian; she makes me cry, of course.” “She’s such a dear off the stage.” And so forth and so on. Harmless stuff for the most part—not, as a rule, scandalous—always and without exception vapid and silly. They are dear, kind-hearted, empty-headed little ladies who sail their boats round the fringes of the lake of dramatic art. They belong to a _genus_ of its own. They never play parts—in the main they couldn’t if they tried—in the main they don’t want to. They are content to talk big, to walk on and on in one “show” after another, until at last they have walked away their good looks and disappear to an even greater obscurity than that of the peasant or the guest.