“Whichever you please. You pays--no you don’t--you takes your choice here without paying your money. But take my tip and keep clear of women. You never know when they ’ll turn round and scratch you--like cats. After all, what can you expect of ’em? I ’ve done with ’em all long ago.” “What about the sea-sick girls to-day?” “I would n’t touch any of ’em with a ten-foot pole,” replied the misogynist, with bitter scorn. “I never was in an engagement where there was such an inferior lot of ladies. I don’t know where the management picked them up. And to think of the number of nice girls in London simply starving for work.” “They seem right enough,” said Joyce, indifferently. “Gad! You should have been with me in ‘Mother Goose’ at Leeds this winter. I was playing one of the men in the moon--they noticed me from the front. You should have seen the slap-up lot we had there. What kind of shop were you in for the winter?” “I was in another walk of life,” replied Joyce, with a curl of his lips. At that moment the call-boy’s voice was heard in the passages: “Beginners for the first act;” and then he appeared himself at the door. “Everybody on the stage.” They trooped out, up the narrow stairs and along the dusty passages and through the wings on to the stage, where they were met by the ladies of the chorus, who came on from the other side; and then all grouped themselves in their customary attitudes under the stage-manager’s eye. Joyce was posed, second on the left, with a girl resting her head on his knee. He greeted her as she took her place. “How are you to-night, Miss Stevens?” he whispered. “Oh, badly. The heat in the dressing-room is awful.” “So it is in ours. It is a wonder we don’t all melt together in a sticky lump.” “It is the worst arranged theatre I was ever in.” “I am sorry,” said Joyce, “you look tired.” “Hush--the orchestra--” The curtain rose slowly, revealing the glare of the footlights and the vague cavernous darkness of the auditorium, seen shimmering, as they reclined on the stage, through the band of unbumed gases above the jets. The opening chorus began with its nodding-mandarin business, followed by eccentric evolutions. Then the tenor came on alone. He jostled Joyce who was standing near the entrance. “Damn it, don’t take up all the stage,” he muttered irritably under cover of the radiant expression demanded by the business. He broke into his song, the chorus lining the sides. Then two minor characters appeared, and after some dialogue, interrupted by Chinese exclamations of delight on the part of the chorus, the latter danced off in pairs. “I do call that cheek,” said Miss Stevens, as soon as they had reached the wings, “why could n’t he look where he was going to?” “Yes, it was his fault,” said Joyce. “That’s the way with all these light tenors--simply eaten up with conceit. If I were you I’d give him a piece of my mind and ask him what the something he meant by it.”