t up to! If
I were not sustained by the presence of you two girls, I should no more
survive the fifth act than most of the characters. Why don't they
brighten the piece up with ballet-girls?"

"Yes, I suppose you blessed Mr. Leon when you got his telegram," said
Esther. "What a bore it must be to you to be saddled with his duties!"

"Awful!" admitted Sidney gravely. "Besides, it interferes with my work."

"Work?" said Addie. "You know you only work by sunlight."

"Yes, that's the best of my profession--in England. It gives you such
opportunities of working--at other professions."

"Why, what do you work at?" inquired Esther, laughing.

"Well, there's amusement, the most difficult of all things to achieve!
Then there's poetry. You don't know what a dab I am at rondeaux and
barcarolles. And I write music, too, lovely little serenades to my
lady-loves and reveries that are like dainty pastels."

"All the talents!" said Addie, looking at him with a fond smile. "But if
you have any time to spare from the curling of your lovely silken
moustache, which is entirely like a delicate pastel, will you kindly
tell me what celebrities are present?"

"Yes, do," added Esther, "I have only been to two first nights, and then
I had nobody to point out the lions."

"Well, first of all I see a very celebrated painter in a box--a man who
has improved considerably on the weak draughtsmanship displayed by
Nature in her human figures, and the amateurishness of her glaring
sunsets."

"Who's that?" inquired Addie and Esther eagerly.

"I think he calls himself Sidney Graham--but that of course is only a
_nom de pinceau_."

"Oh!" said, the girls, with a reproachful smile.

"Do be serious!" said Esther. "Who is that stout gentleman with the bald
head?" She peered down curiously at the stalls through her opera-glass.

"What, the lion without the mane? That's Tom Day, the dramatic critic of
a dozen papers. A terrible Philistine. Lucky for Shakspeare he didn't
flourish in Elizabethan times."

He rattled on till the curtain rose and the hushed audience settled down
to the enjoyment of the tragedy.

"This looks as if it is going to be the true Hamlet," said Esther, after
the first act.

"What do you mean by the true Hamlet?" queried Sidney cynically.

"The Hamlet for whom life is at once too big and too little," said
Esther.

"And who was at once mad and sane," laughed Sidney. "The plain truth is
that Shakspeare followed the old t