ers (the heather-mixture with the red twill),
Johnson Miller was pacing the gangway between the orchestra pit and
the first row of the orchestra chairs, waving one hand and clutching
his white locks with the other, his voice raised the while in agonized
protest.

"Gentlemen, you silly idiots," complained Mr. Miller loudly, "you've
had three weeks to get these movements into your thick heads, and you
haven't done a damn thing right! You're all over the place! You don't
seem able to turn without tumbling over each other like a lot of
Keystone Kops! What's the matter with you? You're not doing the
movements I showed you; you're doing some you have invented
yourselves, and they are rotten! I've no doubt you think you can
arrange a number better than I can, but Mr. Goble engaged me to be the
director, so kindly do exactly as I tell you. Don't try to use your
own intelligence, because you haven't any. I'm not blaming you for it.
It wasn't your fault that your nurses dropped you on your heads when
you were babies. But it handicaps you when you try to think."

Of the seven gentlemanly members of the male ensemble present, six
looked wounded by this tirade. They had the air of good men wrongfully
accused. They appeared to be silently calling on Heaven to see justice
done between Mr. Miller and themselves. The seventh, a long-legged
young man in faultlessly fitting tweeds of English cut, seemed, on the
other hand, not so much hurt as embarrassed. It was this youth who now
stepped down to the darkened footlights and spoke in a remorseful and
conscience-stricken manner.

"I say!"

Mr. Miller, that martyr to deafness, did not hear the pathetic bleat.
He had swung off at right angles and was marching in an overwrought
way up the central aisle leading to the back of the house, his
india-rubber form moving in convulsive jerks. Only when he had turned
and retraced his steps did he perceive the speaker and prepare to take
his share in the conversation.

"What?" he shouted. "Can't hear you!"

"I say, you know, it's my fault, really."

"What?"

"I mean to say, you know...."

"What? Speak up, can't you?"

Mr. Saltzburg, who had been seated at the piano, absently playing a
melody from his unproduced musical comedy, awoke to the fact that the
services of an interpreter were needed. He obligingly left the
music-stool and crept, crab-like, along the ledge of the stage-box. He
placed his arm about Mr. Miller's shoulders and his lip