Mr. May was a little too frisky as Kishwegin. However, it would do.

Ciccio got dressed as soon as possible, to go and look at the horses
hired for the afternoon procession. Alvina accompanied him, Mr. May
and the others were busy.

"You know I think it's quite wonderful, your scene," she said to
Ciccio.

He turned and looked down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested
on her good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a
self-conscious, contemptuous sort of smile.

"Not without Madame," he said, with the slow, half-sneering, stupid
smile. "Without Madame--" he lifted his shoulders and spread his
hands and tilted his brows--"fool's play, you know."

"No," said Alvina. "I think Mr. May is good, considering. What does
Madame _do_?" she asked a little jealously.

"Do?" He looked down at her with the same long, half-sardonic look
of his yellow eyes, like a cat looking casually at a bird which
flutters past. And again he made his shrugging motion. "She does it
all, really. The others--they are nothing--what they are Madame has
made them. And now they think they've done it all, you see. You see,
that's it."

"But how has Madame made it all? Thought it out, you mean?"

"Thought it out, yes. And then _done_ it. You should see her
dance--ah! You should see her dance round the bear, when I bring him
in! Ah, a beautiful thing, you know. She claps her hand--" And
Ciccio stood still in the street, with his hat cocked a little on
one side, rather common-looking, and he smiled along his fine nose
at Alvina, and he clapped his hands lightly, and he tilted his
eyebrows and his eyelids as if facially he were imitating a dance,
and all the time his lips smiled stupidly. As he gave a little
assertive shake of his head, finishing, there came a great yell of
laughter from the opposite pavement, where a gang of pottery lasses,
in aprons all spattered with grey clay, and hair and boots and skin
spattered with pallid spots, had stood to watch. The girls opposite
shrieked again, for all the world like a gang of grey baboons.
Ciccio turned round and looked at them with a sneer along his nose.
They yelled the louder. And he was horribly uncomfortable, walking
there beside Alvina with his rather small and effeminately-shod
feet.

"How stupid they are," said Alvina. "I've got used to them."

"They should be--" he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious
movement--"_smacked_," he concluded, lowering his hand again.

"Who is