, and to which Mike was seeking admission, as a first step
towards London management. He had that day passed an examination before
three of the official members, solemn and important as though they had
been the Honourable Directors of Drury Lane, and had been admitted to
membership in the club, with the promise of a small part in their
forthcoming performance.

"Oh, that's good!" said Esther. "What were they like?"

"Oh, they were all right,--rather humorous. They gave me 'Eugene Aram'
to read--Me reading 'Eugene Aram'!--and a scene out of 'London
Assurance,' which was, of course, better. Naturally, not one of the men
was the remotest bit like himself. One was a queer kind of Irving,
another a sad sort of Arthur Roberts, and the other was--shall we say, a
Tyrian Wyndham."

Actors, like poets, have provincial parodists of their styles in even
greater numbers, so adoringly imitative is humanity. Some day, Mike
would have his imitators,--boys who pulled faces like his, and prided
themselves on having the Laflin wrinkles; just as it was once the
fashion for girls to look like Burne-Jones pictures, or young poets to
imitate Mr. Swinburne.

"Yes, I've got my first part. I've got it in my pocket," said Mike.

"Oh, really! That's splendid!" exclaimed Esther, with delight.

"Wait till you see it," said Mike, bringing out a French's acting
edition of some forgotten comedy. "Yes; guess how many words I've got to
say! Just exactly eleven. And such words!"

"Well, never mind, dear. It's a beginning."

"Certainly, it's a beginning,--the very beginning of a beginning."

"Come, let me see it, Mike. What are you supposed to be?"

At last Mike was persuaded to confess the humble little _role_ for which
the eminent actors who had consented to be his colleagues had cast him.
He was to be the comic boy of a pastry-cook's man, and his distinguished
part in the action of the piece was to come in at a certain moment with
the pie that had been ordered, and, as he delivered it, he was to
remark, "That's a pie as is a pie, is that there pie!"

"Oh, Mike, what a shame!" exclaimed Esther. "How absurd! Why, you're a
better actor with your little finger than any one of them with their
whole body."

"Ah, but they don't know that yet, you see."

"Any one could see it if they looked at your face half-a-minute."

"I wanted to play the part of Snodgrass; but they couldn't think of
giving me that, of course. So, do you know what I pretended