Dorothy did not allude to the chrysalis of West Kensington from which she had just emerged, nor did she mention more than she could help the caterpillar existence of touring. True to her native caution, she avoided committing herself to any sudden friendships that might afterward be regretted, but she fluttered round all the girls in turn, and with Miss Birdie Underhill and Miss Maisie Yorke, two members of the sextet sung from punts in the first act, she made a tolerably high excursion into the empyrean. Birdie and Maisie were tall blondes of the same type as herself, but, being some years older, they were beginning to think that, inasmuch as they had not been able to find even the younger son of a baron whose attentions conformed to his title, they ought to accept the hands of two devoted and moderately rich stock-brokers who had long and patiently admired them. Perhaps it was the first faint intimations of maternity demanding expression that led these two queens of the chorus to hint so graciously to Dorothy at the inheritance they designed for her. To pass from butterflies to bees for a metaphor, they fed her with queens' food (prepared by Romano's) and taught her that the drones must either be married or massacred--even both if necessary. Dorothy was too wise to think she knew everything, and, being acquisitive rather than mimetic, she gained from the two queens the cynicism of a wide experience without subjecting herself to the wear and tear of the process. Lest a too exclusive attention to Miss Underhill and Miss Yorke should leave her stranded when they quitted the chorus, Dorothy frequented equally the company of a very lovely brunette called Olive Fanshawe, who was certainly the most popular girl in the dressing-room and of a sweet and gentle disposition, without either affectation or duplicity. Apart from the advantage of being friends with a girl so genuinely beloved, Dorothy was attracted to Olive Fanshawe's ivory skin and lustrous dark hair; that would set off her own roses and mignonette to perfection, and she was glad when Olive proposed that perhaps later on they might share a flat. She decided, however, to stay at home during the winter, or at any rate until she should have obtained a more prominent place in the chorus and be justified in launching out on her own with some prospect of practical homage in return.