st remarkable dolls
were powerless to appease her distress.

"Give me the confounded pram, nurse," said Edward Henry. "I'll cure
her."

But he did not cure her. However, he had to stick grimly to the
perambulator. Nellie tripped primly in black silk on one side of it.
Nurse had the wayward Ralph by the hand. And Robert, taciturn, stalked
alone, adding up London and making a very small total of it.

Suddenly Edward Henry halted the perambulator, and, stepping away
from it, raised his hat. An excessively elegant young woman leading a
Pekinese by a silver chain stopped as if smitten by a magic dart and
held spellbound.

"How do you do, Miss April?" said Edward Henry, loudly. "I was hoping
to meet you. This is my wife. Nellie--this is Miss April." Nellie
bowed stiffly in her black silk. (Naught of the fresh maiden about
her now!) And it has to be said that Elsie April in all her young and
radiant splendour and woman-of-the-worldliness was equally stiff. "And
there are my two boys. And this is my little girl--in the pram."

Maisie screamed, and pushed an expensive doll out of the perambulator.
Edward Henry saved it by its boot as it fell.

"And this is her doll. And this is nurse," he finished. "Fine breezy
morning, isn't it?"

In due course the processions moved on.

"Well, that's done!" Edward Henry muttered to himself. And sighed.

CHAPTER IX

THE FIRST NIGHT

I

It was upon an evening in June--and a fine evening, full of the
exquisite melancholy of summer in a city--that Edward Henry stood
before a window, drumming thereon as he had once, a less-experienced
man with hair slightly less grey, drummed on the table of the mighty
and arrogant Slosson. The window was the window of the managerial
room of the Regent Theatre. And he could scarcely believe it--he could
scarcely believe that he was not in a dream--for the room was papered,
carpeted and otherwise furnished. Only its electric light fittings
were somewhat hasty and provisional, and the white ceiling showed a
hole and a bunch of wires--like the nerves of a hollow tooth--whence
one of Edward Henry's favourite chandeliers would ultimately depend.

The whole of the theatre was at least as far advanced towards
completion as that room. A great deal of it was more advanced; for
instance, the auditorium, _foyer_, and bars, which were utterly
finished, so far as anything ever is finished in a changing world.
Wonders, marvels and miracles had bee