compute that he
had lost about a thousand dollars a week, and in the fourth week they
struck an engagement so fruitless that even the cheerful Caravaggio
became dismal.

"It's a sure enough frost," she confided to Bobby; "but cheer up, for
the worst is yet to come. Your route sheet for the next two months
looks like a morgue to me, and unless you interpolate a few coon songs
in _Tannhaeuser_ and some song and dance specialties between the acts
of _Les Huguenots_ you're gone. You know I used to sing this route in
musical comedy, and, on the level, I've got a fine part waiting for me
right now in _The Giddy Queen_. I like this highbrow music all right,
but the people that come to hear it make me so sad. You're a good
sport, though, and as long as you need me I'll stick."

"Thanks," said Bobby sincerely. "It's a pleasure to speak to a real
human being once in a while, even if you don't offer any
encouragement. However, we'll not be buried till we're dead,
notwithstanding that we now enter upon the graveyard route."

Doleful experience, however, confirmed the Caravaggio's gloomy
prophecy. They embarked now upon a season of one and two and three
night stands that gave Bobby more of the real discomforts of life than
he had ever before dreamed possible. To close a performance at eleven,
to pack and hurry for a twelve-thirty train, to ride until five
o'clock in the morning--a distance too short for sleep and too long to
stay awake--to tumble into a hotel at six and sleep until noon, this
was one program; to close a performance at eleven, to wait up for a
four-o'clock train, to ride until eight and get into a hotel at nine,
with a vitally necessary rehearsal between that and the evening
performance, was another program, either one of which wore on health
and temper and purse alike. The losses now exceeded two thousand
dollars a week. Moreover, the frequent visits of Biff Bates and his
constant baiting of Signor Ricardo had driven that great tenor to such
a point of distraction that one night, being near New York, he drew
his pay and departed without notice. There was no use, in spite of
Monsieur Noire's frantic insistence, in trying to make the public
believe that the lank Dulceo was the fat Ricardo; moreover,
immediately upon his arrival in New York, Signor Ricardo let it be
known that he had left the Neapolitan Company, so the prestige of the
company fell off at once, for the "country" press pays sharp attention
to these t