h-and-blood megaphone
endeavoured to impart the bad news.

"The girls say they won't go on!"

Mr. Miller nodded.

"I _said_ it was time they were on."

"They're on strike!"

"It's not," said Mr. Miller austerely, "what they _like_, it's what
they're paid for. They ought to be on stage. We should be ringing up
in two minutes."

The stage-director drew another breath, then thought better of it. He
had a wife and children, and, if dadda went under with apoplexy, what
became of the home, civilization's most sacred product? He relaxed the
muscles of his diaphragm, and reached for pencil and paper.

Mr. Miller inspected the message, felt for his spectacle-case, found
it, opened it, took out his glasses, replaced the spectacle-case, felt
for his handkerchief, polished the glasses, replaced the handkerchief,
put the glasses on, and read. A blank look came into his face.

"Why?" he enquired.

The stage-director, with a nod of the head intended to imply that he
must be patient and all would come right in the future, recovered the
paper, and scribbled another sentence. Mr. Miller perused it.

"Because Mae D'Arcy has got her notice?" he queried, amazed. "But the
girl can't dance a step."

The stage-director, by means of a wave of the hand, a lifting of both
eyebrows, and a wrinkling of the nose, replied that the situation,
unreasonable as it might appear to the thinking man, was as he had
stated and must be faced. What, he enquired--through the medium of a
clever drooping of the mouth and a shrug of the shoulders--was to be
done about it?

Mr. Miller remained for a moment in meditation.

"I'll go and talk to them," he said.

He flitted off, and the stage-director leaned back against the
asbestos curtain. He was exhausted, and his throat was in agony, but
nevertheless he was conscious of a feeling of quiet happiness. His
life had been lived in the shadow of the constant fear that some day
Mr. Goble might dismiss him. Should that disaster occur, he felt there
was always a future for him in the movies.

Scarcely had Mr. Miller disappeared on his peace-making errand, when
there was a noise like a fowl going through a quickset hedge, and Mr.
Saltzburg, brandishing his baton as if he were conducting an unseen
orchestra, plunged through the scenery at the left upper entrance and
charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice
through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence,
wait