I beat a hasty retreat for Mazie's room, where the entire feminine cast of "Mrs. Tankerville" was by this time collected. We had to be bestowed in some place where we could talk in safety; and no talking could be allowed "behind" while the plays were in progress, even such a scatter-brained crew as we were, knew that. But from time to time one of us would steal out to the wings, watch the familiar antics, listen to the familiar jokes a while, and bring back a report. I believe we enjoyed this excited hour or two more than anything that went before or after. In Mazie's room the gas flared high; the chairs, the lounge, the bed were heaped with finery. We pulled a big pink silk screen in front of the door so that the arriving audience, taking off its wraps in the other bedrooms, might not see us. There was a green-room atmosphere (we thought) of flowers, candy, perfume, acid gossip; and now and again we could hear one of the men rushing through the hall outside to their quarters in the wing, for a change of clothes; or a thunderous burst of laughter, "like a dam giving away," Kitty said, when the dining-room door in the hall below swung open. "It's going all right," she reported, returning from one of these expeditions with very bright eyes and flushed cheeks. She looked distractingly neat and coquettish in her black frock, cap, and short ruffled apron as the maid; and I was afterwards told that one of the men had caught and kissed her in a dark corner behind the prompter's chair. They all seemed to be in wonderfully high spirits. "Only it's so funny the audience sometimes laugh in places where we didn't expect 'em to at all! You ought to see J. B. Taylor. He looks perfectly _immense_ in that kilt; I didn't _know_ he was such a big man; great big round pink arms like this! And the kilt kind of peaks down right in the middle of the back; Harry Smith called him Doctor Mary Walker; and _Gessler_ said he ought to have a bustle--right out loud so that the people could hear! They call that _gagging_ the part." She sent a glance of sparkling malice, suggestive, somehow, of a file of small new pins, toward Muriel. "J. B.'s the _silliest_--you can't help laughing to save your life." "Did they laugh at Teddy?" "Like everything! He's a little husky, or else it's too much dinner, his voice sounds kind of queer, but I guess that will wear off in a minute." She added in a rapid whisper, as Mazie's back was turned, "Girls, it's _rich_! He's got himself up to look about as fat as Mrs. Botlisch in an old gingham wrapper without corsets, you know, and he's sort of taking her off, he's simply _splendid_, people just roll over and laugh every time he opens his mouth." "Is Doctor Vardaman there?" "What, behind? No. He's not here at all, one of the men told me. He had to go and sit up with some sick person, or something. Don't you want to see J. B., Muriel?"