When on that wet Christmas morning at Euston she had seen the companions to close contact with whom she was bound for six months--a polychromatic group of crude pink complexions, mauve veils, electric seal, and exaggerated boots, looking in the mass like a shop-window in a second-rate thoroughfare, the sort of shop-window that has bundles of overcoats hanging outside the doorway, which indeed the men resembled--she had felt a sudden revulsion from them all, which those days in Manchester had done nothing to cure. The first fortnight's bills for board and lodging had already shown Dorothy that existence on a guinea a week was not going to be easy; if she were ever engaged for London, she should require money to dress herself well at the beginning of her career, and it was imperative to save every penny she possibly could now in order to preserve intact the £500 she had obtained from her mother. An immediate economy would be effected in their weekly expenses if she and Lily could persuade another girl to share lodgings with them, and Dorothy began to study the ranks of the chorus for a suitable partner. Of course, from a social point of view she would have preferred to live with one of the principals, but the principals had not yet paid any attention to her, and she would not risk making advances first; besides, their standard of living might be too high for one who did not intend to waste money on the provinces. But when she considered her companions of the chorus, the dreadful language many of them used, the outrageous stories they told at the top of their voices, and, worst of all, their cockney accents, Dorothy shrank from extending the enforced intimacy of the dressing-room to her weekly home. This problem had not been solved when on the third Sunday after Christmas the company left Manchester for Birmingham, and by the newly arranged order of traveling Miss Dorothy Lonsdale found herself allotted to share a compartment with Miss Lily Haden, Miss Fay Onslow, and Miss Sylvia Scarlett.