y.

"Why?" cried Alvina.

"Oh--why!" He was rather ironic. "Well, it's not my line at _all_.
I'm not a _film-operator_!" And he put his head on one side with a
grimace of contempt and superiority.

"But you are, as well," said Alvina.

"Yes, _as well_. But not _only_! You _may_ wash the dishes in the
scullery. But you're not only the _char_, are you?"

"But is it the same?" cried Alvina.

"Of cauce!" cried Mr. May. "Of _cauce_ it's the same."

Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken
eyes.

"But what will you do?" she asked.

"I shall have to look for something else," said the injured but
dauntless little man. "There's nothing _else_, is there?"

"Wouldn't you stay on?" she asked.

"I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't think of it." He turtled like an
injured pigeon.

"Well," she said, looking laconically into his face: "It's between
you and father--"

"Of _cauce_!" he said. "Naturally! Where else--!" But his tone was a
little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.

Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, "it's a move in the
right direction. But I doubt if it'll do any good."

"Do you?" said Alvina. "Why?"

"I don't believe in the place, and I never did," declared Miss
Pinnegar. "I don't believe any good will come of it."

"But why?" persisted Alvina. "What makes you feel so sure about it?"

"I don't know. But that's how I feel. And I have from the first. It
was wrong from the first. It was wrong to begin it."

"But why?" insisted Alvina, laughing.

"Your father had no business to be led into it. He'd no business to
touch this show business. It isn't like him. It doesn't belong to
him. He's gone against his own nature and his own life."

"Oh but," said Alvina, "father was a showman even in the shop. He
always was. Mother said he was like a showman in a booth."

Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.

"Well!" she said sharply. "If _that's_ what you've seen in
him!"--there was a pause. "And in that case," she continued tartly,
"I think some of the showman has come out in his daughter! or
show-woman!--which doesn't improve it, to my idea."

"Why is it any worse?" said Alvina. "I enjoy it--and so does
father."

"No," cried Miss Pinnegar. "There you're wrong! There you make a
mistake. It's all against his better nature."

"Really!" said Alvina, in surprise. "What a new idea! But whic