ap, and presently the curtain
went up and the show was on with a rush of girls and colour.

It was an entirely new experience. From the upper gallery the actors
and actresses always seemed more or less impersonal and abstract, but
here they were living, palpitating human beings, almost within hand
reach, certainly within eye reach, as Dave presently discovered. There
was a trooping of girls about the stage, with singing and rippling
laughter and sweet, clear voices; then a sudden change of formation
flung a line of girls right across behind the footlights, where they
tripped merrily through motions of mingled grace and acrobatics. Dave
found himself regarding the young woman immediately before him; all in
white she was, with some scintillating material that sparkled in the
glare of the spot-light; then suddenly she was in orange, and pink, and
purple, and mauve, and back again in white. And although she performed
the various steps with smiling abandon, there was in her dress and
manner a modesty which fascinated the boy with a subtlety which a more
reckless appearance would have at once defeated.

And then Dave looked in her face. It was a pretty face,
notwithstanding its grease-paint, and it smiled right into his eyes.
His heart thumped between his shoulders as though it would drive all
the air from his lungs. She smiled at him--for him! Now they were
away again; there were gyrations about the stage, he almost lost her in
the maze; a young man in fine clothes rushed in, and was apparently
being mobbed by the girls, and said some lines in a rapid voice which
Dave's ear had not been trained to catch; and then he danced about with
one of them--with the very one--with his one! My, how nimble she was!
He wondered if she knew the young man very well. They seemed very
friendly. But he supposed she had to do that anyway; it was part of
her job; it was all in the play. Certainly the young man was very
clever, but he didn't like his looks. Certainly he could dance very
well. "I could make him dance different to the tune of a six-shooter,"
Dave said to himself, and then flushed a little. That was silly. The
young man was paid to do this, too. Still it looked like a very good
job. It looked like a very much better job than shovelling coal for
Metford.

Then there was a sudden break-away in the dance, and the girl
disappeared behind a forest, and the mobbing of the young man
recommenced. Dave supposed she had g