ars a
week--more than the President of the United States and his Cabinet; but
he was not happy, as he confided to Montague, because he did not know
how to read, and this was a cause of perpetual humiliation. The secret
desire of this little actor's heart was to play Shakespeare; he had
"Hamlet" read to him, and pondered how to act it--all the time that he
was flourishing his little cane and making his grimaces! He had chanced
to be on the stage when a fire had broken out, and five or six hundred
victims of greed were roasted to death. The actor had pleaded with the
people to keep their seats, but all in vain; and all his life
thereafter he went about with this vision of horror in his mind, and
haunted by the passionate conviction that he had failed because of his
lack of education--that if only he had been a man of culture, he would
have been able to think of something to say to hold those
terror-stricken people!

At three o'clock in the morning the performance came to an end, and
then there were more refreshments; and Mrs. Vivie Patton came and sat
by him, and they had a nice comfortable gossip. When Mrs. Vivie once
got started at talking about people, her tongue ran on like a windmill.

There was Reggie Mann, meandering about and simpering at people. Reggie
was in his glory at Mrs. de Graffenried's affairs. Reggie had arranged
all this-he did the designing and the ordering, and contracted for the
shows with the agents. You could bet that he had got his commission on
them, too--though sometimes Mrs. de Graffenried got the shows to come
for nothing, because of the advertising her name would bring.
Commissions were Reggie's speciality--he had begun life as an auto
agent. Montague didn't know what that was? An auto agent was a man who
was for ever begging his friends to use a certain kind of car, so that
he might make a living; and Reggie had made about thirty thousand a
year in that way. He had come from Boston, where his reputation had
been made by the fact that early one morning, as they were driving home
from a celebration, he had dared a young society matron to take off her
shoes and stockings, and get out and wade in the public fountain; and
she had done it, and he had followed her. On the strength of the eclat
of this he had been taken up by Mrs. Devon; and one day Mrs. Devon had
worn a white gown, and asked him what he thought of it. "It needs but
one thing to make it perfect," said Reggie, and taking a red rose,