a school round the corner.'

"'Well,' I said, 'you might give me a card of introduction, Mr.
Florance.'

"He gave me the card. I didn't take it to the school. I went straight
back to the theatre with it, and had it sent up to Wunch. It just
said, 'Introducing Mr. Sachs, a young man anxious to get on.' Wunch
took it for a positive order to find me a place. The company was full,
so he threw out one poor devil of a super to make room for me. Curious
thing--old Wunchy got it into his head that I was a _protege_ of
Archibald's, and he always looked after me. What d'ye think about
that?"

"Brilliant!" said Edward Henry. And it was! The simplicity of the
thing was what impressed him. Since winning a scholarship at school by
altering the number of marks opposite his name on a paper lying on the
master's desk, Edward Henry had never achieved advancement by a device
so simple. And he thought: "I am nothing! The Five Towns is nothing!
All that one hears about Americans and the United States is true. As
far as getting on goes, they can make rings round us. Still, I shall
tell him about the Countess and the mule--"

"Yes," continued Mr. Seven Sachs, "Wunch was very kind to me. But he
was pretty well down and out, and he left, and Archibald got a
new stage-manager, and I was promoted to do a bit of assistant
stage-managing. But I got no increase of salary. There were two
women stars in the play Archibald was doing then--'The Forty-Niners.'
Romantic drama, you know! Melodrama you'd call it over here. He never
did any other sort of play. Well, these two women stars were about
equal, and when the curtain fell on the first act they'd both make a
bee line for Archibald to see who'd get to him first and engage him
in talk. They were jealous enough of each other to kill. Anybody could
see that Archibald was frightfully bored, but he couldn't escape. They
got him on both sides, you see, and he just _had_ to talk to 'em, both
at once. I used to be fussing around fixing the properties for the
next act. Well, one night he comes up to me, Archibald does, and he
says:

"'Mr.--what's your name?'

"'Sachs, sir,' I says.

"'You notice when those two ladies come up to me after the first act.
Well, when you see them talking to me, I want you to come right along
and interrupt,' he says.

"'What shall I say, sir?'

"'Tap me on the shoulder and say I'm wanted about something very
urgent. You see?'

"So the next night when those women got