e and the
Pleasure Palace. She laughed when she saw her father's theatre-notices
plastered about. She laughed when she saw his thrilling announcements
in the _Woodhouse Weekly_. She laughed when she knew that all the
Woodhouse youths recognized her, and looked on her as one of their
inferior entertainers. She was off the map: and she liked it.

For after all, she got a good deal of fun out of it. There was not
only the continual activity. There were the artistes. Every week she
met a new set of stars--three or four as a rule. She rehearsed with
them on Monday afternoons, and she saw them every evening, and twice
a week at matinees. James now gave two performances each
evening--and he always had _some_ audience. So that Alvina had
opportunity to come into contact with all the odd people of the
inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little
frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary
morality, and philosophical even if irritable. They were often very
irritable. And they had always a certain fund of callous
philosophy. Alvina did not _like_ them--you were not supposed,
really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found it amusing
to see them all and know them all. It was so different from
Woodhouse, where everything was priced and ticketed. These people
were nomads. They didn't care a straw who you were or who you
weren't. They had a most irritable professional vanity, and that was
all. It was most odd to watch them. They weren't very squeamish. If
the young gentlemen liked to peep round the curtain when the young
lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them
off, perhaps, but nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers
and black silk stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint
or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade.
As for immorality--well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal.
Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about
any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each
other, men were only there to act with: even if the act was a
private love-farce of an improper description. What's the odds? You
couldn't get excited about it: not as a rule.

Mr. May usually took rooms for the artistes in a house down in
Lumley. When any one particular was coming, he would go to a rather
better-class widow in Woodhouse. He never let Alvina take any part
in the making of these arrange