Lily was quite ready to accept Miss Scarlett's company, though, as Dorothy thought impatiently, she would have been equally willing to accept the dresser's, if Dorothy had thought of inviting the dresser to share rooms with them. "Do you want a cup of tea, Lil?" a young man came along and asked at this moment. When Lily declared that she should love a cup of tea, he hurried off toward the buffet. "Do you know him?" asked Dorothy, in surprise. "Only since we joined the company." "But he's one of the chorus-boys, isn't he?" "Yes." "And you let him call you Lily already?" Dorothy hoped it was no worse than Lily; it had sounded dreadfully like Lil. "Why shouldn't I?" "Of course, it's your own business," said Dorothy, turning coldly away to eye Sylvia Scarlett, who was striding up and down the platform with both hands in the pockets of a frieze overcoat and looking so independent of everybody in the world that she felt shy of interrupting her. At that moment Lily was carried off by the chorus-boy for a cup of tea, which, had it been arsenic, Dorothy could not have declined more indignantly, and she found herself alone upon the platform and exposed to the glances of the comedian, a debased sport from the famous Vanity comedian whose mannerisms he had reproduced in the provinces as well as he was able for fifteen years, and would probably continue to reproduce for as many more. A small and ugly man, Joe Wiltshire had become so hardened to women's snubs that by sheer recklessness and indiscrimination he managed to fill his bag. If he was weak with rocketing pheasants he never hesitated to pot a sitting rabbit; in other words, he made love to every woman he met and found 5 per cent. of them amenable. Now with a view to impressing the prettiest girl in the chorus he was being funny with two bottles of stout and a corkscrew; but though he managed to cheer up the porter on duty, he failed to amuse Dorothy, who seized an opportunity of escaping from the performance by attaching herself to Sylvia Scarlett on her return promenade. "I say," she began, in her best West Kensington manner. "I hope you won't think it awful cheek on my part, but my friend and I--you know, that pretty, fair girl who was in our carriage--would be awfully glad if you'd join us this week in our digs. Awfully nice rooms, but rather expensive for two, though we ought to be able to manage quite reasonably with three. Of course, if you're already fixed--" "I've never been fixed in my life," said Miss Scarlett, sharply, "and I certainly don't intend to be fixed in Birmingham." "No, I say, shut up; don't laugh. Have you been on the stage long?" "Two weeks and two days." "Oh, I say, really, then this is your first shop?"