yes. The smell of a
musk-plant makes me shudder to this day. I sat there stupidly till dusk;
then I crept to my sliver of a bed, and cried, and cried, and sobbed the
whole weary, hot night through. Next day I simply could not rise, and so
for weeks I dragged heavily up and down the stairs, loathing the very
sight of the dining-room, and driven half wild with that never-sleeping
craving for ice-cream.

It was purgatory, it was the very tragedy of littleness. And that was my
first theatrical vacation.

CHAPTER NINTH

The Season Reopens--I meet the Yellow Breeches and become a Utility
Man--Mr. Murdock Escapes Fits and my "Luck" Proves to be Extra Work.

The exuberance of my joy over the opening of the new season was somewhat
modified by my close relations with a certain pair of knee-breeches--and
I wish to say right here that when Gail Hamilton declared inanimate
things were endowed with powers of malice and general mischievousness,
she was not exaggerating, but speaking strictly by the card.

Some men think her charge was made solely against collar-buttons, whose
conduct the world admits is detrimental to good morals; but they are
wrong; she included many things in her charge. Consider the
innocent-looking rocking-chair, for instance. When it strikes does not
the rocker always find your ankle-joint? In darkness or in light did it
ever miss that exact spot? Never! And then how gently it will sway, while
you rear and stamp, and, with briny eyes, say--well, things you should
not say, things you would not say but for the malice of an inanimate
thing.

Perhaps the quickest way to win your sympathy is to tell you at once that
those knee-breeches were made of yellow plush, bright yellow--I thought
that would move you! There was a coat, too--yes, things can always be
worse, you see; and when I was crowded into that awful livery I felt like
hopping about in a search for hemp-seed, I looked so like an enormous
canary that had outgrown its cage.

Had Gail Hamilton known those breeches she would have said: "Here is
total depravity in yellow plush!"

You see, the way they got their grip on me originally was this. There had
been two utility men engaged for the company, but one of them was taken
sick and could not come to the city at all, and the other one made the
manager sick, and was discharged for utter incompetency, and that very
night there was required a male servant who could in the first act summon
the sta