less. They shan't engage her either, unless
they engage Mrs Crummles too--twenty pound a week for the pair; or I'll
tell you what, I'll throw in myself and the two boys, and they shall
have the family for thirty. I can't say fairer than that. They must take
us all, if none of us will go without the others. That's the way some of
the London people do, and it always answers. Thirty pound a week--it's
too cheap, Johnson. It's dirt cheap.'

Nicholas replied, that it certainly was; and Mr Vincent Crummles taking
several huge pinches of snuff to compose his feelings, hurried away to
tell Mrs Crummles that he had quite settled the only terms that could be
accepted, and had resolved not to abate one single farthing.

When everybody was dressed and the curtain went up, the excitement
occasioned by the presence of the London manager increased a
thousand-fold. Everybody happened to know that the London manager had
come down specially to witness his or her own performance, and all were
in a flutter of anxiety and expectation. Some of those who were not
on in the first scene, hurried to the wings, and there stretched their
necks to have a peep at him; others stole up into the two little private
boxes over the stage-doors, and from that position reconnoitred the
London manager. Once the London manager was seen to smile--he smiled
at the comic countryman's pretending to catch a blue-bottle, while Mrs
Crummles was making her greatest effect. 'Very good, my fine fellow,'
said Mr Crummles, shaking his fist at the comic countryman when he came
off, 'you leave this company next Saturday night.'

In the same way, everybody who was on the stage beheld no audience but
one individual; everybody played to the London manager. When Mr Lenville
in a sudden burst of passion called the emperor a miscreant, and then
biting his glove, said, 'But I must dissemble,' instead of looking
gloomily at the boards and so waiting for his cue, as is proper in such
cases, he kept his eye fixed upon the London manager. When Miss Bravassa
sang her song at her lover, who according to custom stood ready to shake
hands with her between the verses, they looked, not at each other, but
at the London manager. Mr Crummles died point blank at him; and when the
two guards came in to take the body off after a very hard death, it was
seen to open its eyes and glance at the London manager. At length the
London manager was discovered to be asleep, and shortly after that
he wo