Mr. May fairly pranced into the empty hall.

"Well!" he said, shutting both his fists and flourishing them in
Miss Pinnegar's face. "How did it go?"

"I think it went very well," she said.

"Very well! I should think so, indeed. It went like a house on fire.
What? Didn't it?" And he laughed a high, excited little laugh.

James was counting pennies for his life, in the cash-place, and
dropping them into a Gladstone bag. The others had to wait for him.
At last he locked his bag.

"Well," said Mr. May, "done well?"

"Fairly well," said James, huskily excited. "Fairly well."

"Only fairly? Oh-h!" And Mr. May suddenly picked up the bag. James
turned as if he would snatch it from him. "Well! Feel that, for
fairly well!" said Mr. May, handing the bag to Alvina.

"Goodness!" she cried, handing it to Miss Pinnegar.

"Would you believe it?" said Miss Pinnegar, relinquishing it to
James. But she spoke coldly, aloof.

Mr. May turned off the gas at the meter, came talking through the
darkness of the empty theatre, picking his way with a flash-light.

"C'est le premier pas qui coute," he said, in a sort of American
French, as he locked the doors and put the key in his pocket. James
tripped silently alongside, bowed under the weight of his Gladstone
bag of pennies.

"How much have we taken, father?" asked Alvina gaily.

"I haven't counted," he snapped.

When he got home he hurried upstairs to his bare chamber. He swept
his table clear, and then, in an expert fashion, he seized handfuls
of coin and piled them in little columns on his board. There was an
army of fat pennies, a dozen to a column, along the back, rows and
rows of fat brown rank-and-file. In front of these, rows of slim
halfpence, like an advance-guard. And commanding all, a stout column
of half-crowns, a few stoutish and important florin-figures, like
general and colonels, then quite a file of shillings, like so many
captains, and a little cloud of silvery lieutenant sixpences. Right
at the end, like a frail drummer boy, a thin stick of threepenny
pieces.

There they all were: burly dragoons of stout pennies, heavy and
holding their ground, with a screen of halfpenny light infantry,
officered by the immovable half-crown general, who in his turn was
flanked by all his staff of florin colonels and shilling captains,
from whom lightly moved the nimble sixpenny lieutenants all
ignoring the wan, frail Joey of the threepenny-bits.

Time after time James