he orchestra was playing and the audience
intermittently applauding. The infusion of the amateurs clogged the
working of things behind the stage, crowded the passages, dressing
rooms, and wings, and forced everybody into everybody else's way.
This was particularly distasteful to the professionals, who carried
themselves as befitted those of a higher caste, and whose behavior
toward the pariah amateurs was marked by hauteur and even brutality. And
Edna, bullied and elbowed and shoved about, clinging desperately to her
basket and seeking a dressing room, took note of it all.

A dressing room she finally found, jammed with three other amateur
"ladies," who were "making up" with much noise, high-pitched voices, and
squabbling over a lone mirror. Her own make-up was so simple that it was
quickly accomplished, and she left the trio of ladies holding an armed
truce while they passed judgment upon her. Letty was close at her
shoulder, and with patience and persistence they managed to get a nook
in one of the wings which commanded a view of the stage.

A small, dark man, dapper and debonair, swallow-tailed and top-hatted,
was waltzing about the stage with dainty, mincing steps, and in a thin
little voice singing something or other about somebody or something
evidently pathetic. As his waning voice neared the end of the lines, a
large woman, crowned with an amazing wealth of blond hair, thrust rudely
past Edna, trod heavily on her toes, and shoved her contemptuously to
the side. "Bloomin' hamateur!" she hissed as she went past, and the next
instant she was on the stage, graciously bowing to the audience, while
the small, dark man twirled extravagantly about on his tiptoes.

"Hello, girls!"

This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal caress in every
syllable, close in her ear, caused Edna to give a startled little jump.
A smooth-faced, moon-faced young man was smiling at her good-naturedly.
His "make-up" was plainly that of the stock tramp of the stage, though
the inevitable whiskers were lacking.

"Oh, it don't take a minute to slap'm on," he explained, divining the
search in her eyes and waving in his hand the adornment in question.
"They make a feller sweat," he explained further. And then, "What's yer
turn?"

"Soprano--sentimental," she answered, trying to be offhand and at ease.

"Whata you doin' it for?" he demanded directly.

"For fun; what else?" she countered.

"I just sized you up for that as soon as I put