ke wearily. "Be kind enough to let me know, Packer, when you
and Missmiss can bring yourselves to permit this rehearsal to continue."

"All ready, sir," said Packer briskly. "All ready now, Mr. Potter." And
upon the star's limply rising, Miss Ellsling, most tactful of leading
women, went back to his cue with a change of emphasis in her reading
that helped to restore him somewhat to his poise. "It is noble," she
repeated, "and I feel that I am unworthy of you!"

Counting ten slowly proved to be the proper deference to the smile,
and Miss Malone was allowed to come down the stage and complete,
undisturbed, her ingenue request to know what the two good people were
conspiring about. Thereafter the rehearsal went on in a strange, unreal
peace like that of a prairie noon in the cyclone season.

"Notice that girl?" old Tinker muttered, as Wanda Malone finished
another ingenue question with a light laugh, as commanded by her
manuscript. "She's frightened but she's steady."

"What girl?" Canby was shampooing himself feverishly and had little
interest in girls. "I made it a disagreeable character because--"

"I mean the one he's letting out on--Malone," said Tinker. "Didn't
you notice her voice? Her laugh reminds me of Fanny Caton's--and Dora
Preston's--"

"Who?" Canby asked vaguely.

"Oh, nobody you'd remember; some old-time actresses that had their
day--and died--long ago. This girl's voice made me think of them."

"She may, she may," said Canby hurriedly. "Mr. Tinker, the play is
ruined. He's tangled the whole act up so that I can't tell what it's
about myself. Instead of Roderick Hanscom's being a man that people
dislike for his conceit and selfishness he's got him absolutely turned
round. I oughtn't to allow it--but everything's so different from what
I thought it would be! He doesn't seem to know I'm here. I came prepared
to read the play to the company; I thought he'd want me to."

"Oh, no," said Tinker. "He never does that."

"Why not?"

"Wastes time, for one thing. The actors don't listen except when their
own parts are being read."

"Good gracious!"

"Their own parts are all they have to look out for," the old man
informed him dryly. "I've known actors to play a long time in parts that
didn't appear in the last act, and they never know how the play ended."

"Good gracious!"

"Never cared, either," Tinker added.

"Good gr--"

"Sh! He's breaking out again!"

A shriek of agony came from the stage. "P