h a sure eye the properties which Mr. Mackwayte
would require for the sketches he would play that evening. In the
middle of it all the throbbing of a car echoed down the quiet
road outside. Then there came a ring at the front door.

* * * * * *

At half-past nine that night, Barbara found herself standing
beside her father in the wings of the vast Palaceum stage. Just
at her back was the little screened-off recess where Mr.
Mackwayte was to make the quick changes that came in the course
of his turn. Here, since her arrival in the theatre, Barbara had
been busy laying out coats and hats and rigs and grease-paints on
the little table below the mirror with its two brilliant electric
bulbs, whilst Mr. Mackwayte was in his dressing-room upstairs
changing into his first costume.

Now, old Mackwayte stood at her elbow in his rig-out as an old
London bus-driver in the identical, characteristic clothes which
he had worn for this turn for the past 25 years. He was far too
old a hand to show any nervousness he might feel at the ordeal
before him. He was chatting in undertones in his gentle,
confidential way to the stage manager.

All around them was that curious preoccupied stillness hush of
the power-house which makes the false world of the stage so
singularly unreal by contrast when watched from the back. The
house was packed from floor to ceiling, for the Palaceum's policy
of breaking away from revue and going back to Mr. Mackwayte
called "straight vaudeville" was triumphantly justifying itself.

Standing in the wings, Barbara could almost feel the electric
current running between the audience and the comedian who, with
the quiet deliberation of the finished artist, was going through
his business on the stage. As he made each of his carefully
studied points, he paused, confident of the vast rustle of
laughter swelling into a hurricane of applause which never failed
to come from the towering tiers of humanity before him,
stretching away into the roof where the limelights blazed and
spluttered. Save for the low murmur of voices at her side, the
silence behind the scenes was absolute. No one was idle. Everyone
was at his post, his attention concentrated on that diminutive
little figure in the ridiculous clothes which the spot-lights
tracked about the stage.

It was the high-water mark of modern music-hall development. The
perfect smoothness of the organization gave Barbara a great
feeling o