tumbled
upon a family gathering. As, however, nobody seemed disconcerted at my
entry, I ventured to take a vacant seat next to an extremely small and
boyish-looking gentleman and to ask him if this was the room in which I,
an applicant for a place in the chorus of the forthcoming comic opera,
ought to be waiting.

He had large, fishy eyes, with which he looked me up and down. For such
a length of time he remained thus regarding me in silence that a massive
gentleman sitting near, who had overheard, took it upon himself to reply
in the affirmative, adding that from what he knew of Butterworth we
would all of us be waiting here a damned sight longer than any gentleman
should keep other ladies and gentlemen waiting for no reason at all.

"I think it exceedingly bad form," observed the fishy-eyed gentleman,
in deep contralto tones, "for any gentleman to take it upon himself to
reply to a remark addressed to quite another gentleman."

"I beg your pardon," retorted the large gentleman. "I thought you were
asleep."

"I think it very ill manners," remarked the small gentlemen in the same
slow and impressive tones, "for any gentleman to tell another gentleman,
who happens to be wide awake, that he thought he was asleep."

"Sir," returned the massive gentleman, assuming with the help of a large
umbrella a quite Johnsonian attitude, "I decline to alter my manners to
suit your taste."

"If you are satisfied with them," replied the small gentleman, "I cannot
help it. But I think you are making a mistake."

"Does anybody know what the opera is about?" asked a bright little woman
at the other end of the room.

"Does anybody ever know what a comic opera is about?" asked another
lady, whose appearance suggested experience.

"I once asked the author," observed a weary-looking gentleman, speaking
from a corner. "His reply was: 'Well, if you had asked me at the
beginning of the rehearsals I might have been able to tell you, but
damned if I could now![']"

"It wouldn't surprise me," observed a good-looking gentleman in a velvet
coat, "if there occurred somewhere in the proceedings a drinking chorus
for male voices."

"Possibly, if we are good," added a thin lady with golden hair, "the
heroine will confide to us her love troubles, which will interest us and
excite us."

The door at the further end of the room opened and a name was cal[l]ed.
An elderly lady rose and went out.

"Poor old Gertie!" remarked sympathetically the t