ere very happy, and, so far as it
accorded with the selfishness of a limited company, they were well
looked after. The managing director called them "Children," and was
firmly convinced that he treated them as children. Actually, he treated
them as dolls, and in the case of girls well into the thirties, with
some of the sentimental indulgence lavished on old broken dolls. Perhaps
it was the crowd of men who waited every night at the end of the long,
narrow court that led from Jermyn Street down to the Orient stage door,
which has helped to preserve the vulgar and baseless tradition of
frailty still sedulously propagated. Every night, about half-past
eleven, the strange mixture of men waited for the gradual exodus of the
ladies of the ballet. A group of men, inherently the same, had stood
thus on six nights of the week for more than fifty years.

They had stood there with Dundreary whiskers, in rakish full capes and
strapped overalls. They had waited there with the mutton-chop whiskers
and ample trousers of the 'seventies. Down the court years ago had come
the beauties, with their striped stockings and swaying crinolines and
velvety chignons. Down the court they had tripped in close-fitting
pleated skirts a little later, and later still with the protruding
bustles and skin-tight sleeves of the 'eighties. They had taken the
London starlight with the balloon sleeves of the mid-'nineties. They
took the starlight now, as sweet and tender as the fairs of long ago.
They came out in couples, in laughing companies, and sometimes singly
with eager, searching glances. They came out throwing their wraps around
them in the sudden coolness of the air. They lingered at the end of the
court in groups delicate as porcelain, enjoying the freedom and reunion
with life. Their talk was hushed and melodious as the conversation of
people moving slowly across dusky lawns. They were dear to the
imaginative observer. He watched them with pride and affection as he
would have watched fishing-boats steal home to their haven about sunset.
Every night they danced and smiled and decked themselves for the
pleasure of the world. They rehearsed so hard that sometimes they would
fall down after a dance, crying on the stage where they had fallen from
sheer exhaustion. They were not rich. Most of them were married, with
children and little houses in teeming suburbs. Many, of course, were
free to accept the escort of loiterers by the stage-door. The latter
o