p around him a very familiar dress, dark green and
embroidered with silver and stage-rubies. He'd safety-pinned a folded
towel around his chest--to make a bosom of sorts, I realized.

He armed into the sleeves and turned his back to me. "Hook me up,
would you?" he entreated.

Then it hit me. They had no actresses in Shakespeare's day, they used
boys. And the dark green dress was so familiar to me because--

"Martin," I said, halfway up the hooks and working fast--Miss Nefer's
costume fitted him fine. "You're going to play--?"

"Lady Macbeth, yes," he finished for me. "Wish me courage, will you
Greta? Nobody else seems to think I need it."

* * * * *

I punched him half-heartedly in the rear. Then, as I fastened the last
hooks, my eyes topped his shoulder and I looked at our faces side by
side in the mirror of his dressing table. His, in spite of the female
edging and him being at least eight years younger than me, I think,
looked wise, poised, infinitely resourceful with power in reserve,
very very real, while mine looked like that of a bewildered and
characterless child ghost about to scatter into air--and the edges of
my charcoal sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors,
didn't dispel that last illusion.

"Oh, by the way, Greta," he said, "I picked up a copy of _The Village
Times_ for you. There's a thumbnail review of our _Measure for
Measure_, though it mentions no names, darn it. It's around here
somewhere...."

But I was already hurrying on. Oh, it was logical enough to have
Martin playing Mrs. Macbeth in a production styled to Shakespeare's
own times (though pedantically over-authentic, I'd have thought) and
it really did answer all my questions, even why Miss Nefer could sink
herself wholly in Elizabeth tonight if she wanted to. But it meant
that I must be missing so much of what was going on right around me,
in spite of spending 24 hours a day in the dressing room, or at most
in the small adjoining john or in the wings of the stage just outside
the dressing room door, that it scared me. Siddy telling everybody,
"_Macbeth_ tonight in Elizabethan costume, boys and girls," sure, that
I could have missed--though you'd have thought he'd have asked my help
on the costumes.

But Martin getting up in Mrs. Mack. Why, someone must have held the
part on him twenty-eight times, cueing him, while he got the lines.
And there must have been at least a couple of run-throug