old me to show you her first act," said the woman called Collins,
and, throwing open another of the trunks, she indicated some of the
costumes contained in it.

It was a new world to Glory, and there was something tingling and
electrical in the atmosphere about her. There were the shouts and curses
of the scene-shifters on the stage, the laughing voices of the chorus
girls going by the door, and all the multitudinous noises of the theatre
before the curtain rises. Presently there was a rustle of silk, and two
young ladies came bouncing into the room. One was tall and pink and
white, like a scarlet runner, the other was little and dainty. They
stared at Glory, and she was compelled to speak.

"Miss Bellman, I presume?"

"Ye mean Betty, down't ye?" said the tall lady, and at that moment Betty
herself arrived. She was a plump person with a kind of vulgar comeliness,
and Glory had a vague sense of having seen her before somewhere.

"So ye've came," she said, and she took possession of Glory straightway.
"Help me off of my sealskin."

Glory did so. The others were similarly disrobed, and in a few moments
their three ladyships were busy before the toilet tables with their
grease and rose-pink and black pencils.

Glory was taking down the hair of her stout ladyship, and her stout
ladyship was looking at Glory in the glass.

"Not a bad face, girls, eh?"

The other two glanced at Glory approvingly. "Not bad," they answered, and
then hummed or whistled as they went on with their making-up.

"Oh, _thank_ you," said Glory, with a low courtesy, and everybody
laughed. It was really very amusing. Suddenly it ceased to be so.

"And what's it's nyme, my dear?" said the little lady.

A sort of shame at using in this company the name that was sacred to
home, to the old parson, and to John Storm, came creeping over Glory like
a goosing of the flesh, and by the inspiration of a sudden memory she
answered, "Gloria."

The little lady paused with the black pencil at her eyebrows, and said:

"My! What a nyme for the top line of a bill!"

"Ugh! Mykes me feel like Sundays, though," said the tall lady with a
shudder.

"Irish, my dear?"

"Something of that sort," said Glory.

"Brought up a laidy, I'll be bound?"

"My father was a clergyman," said Glory, "but----"

A sudden peal of laughter stopped her, whereupon she threw up her head,
and her eyes flashed: but her stout ladyship patted her hands and said:

"No offence, Glo,