begin, they lasted until all hours.

But the labors of the chorus, and even of the sextette, shrank very much
in proportion to the work of the principals. Nearly all the changes that
were made were in the direction of compressing the chorus and giving the
principals more room. So that for long stretches of time, during which,
dressed in her working clothes and curled up in one of the remoter of
the cushioned window-seats, but ready to answer a summons to the stage
as promptly as a fireman, she could let her mind run without
interruption on the solution of some of her own problems, and then be
ready when she went back to her room, to fall into bed and asleep (the
two acts had become practically simultaneous) secure in the possession
of a clearly thought out program for the morrow.

She wakened automatically at half past seven and was down-town by half
past eight, to do whatever shopping the work of the previous day
revealed the need of. The fact that it was, for the greater part, John
Galbraith's money she was spending (she had managed to put in a little
herself by calculating down to a fine point the necessary margin for
existence) worked to her advantage in these operations. She could not,
but for that fact, have forced herself to hunt down bargains so
persistently nor to keep the incidental expense for findings and such,
so low.

At nine-thirty in the morning--an unheard of hour in the theater--the
watchman at the Globe let her in the stage door, and Rose had half an
hour before the arrival of the wardrobe mistress and her assistant, for
looking over the work done since she had left for rehearsal the day
before.

She liked this quiet, cavernous old barn of a place down under the Globe
stage; liked it when she had it to herself before the two sewing women
came and later, when, with a couple of sheets spread down on the floor
she cut and basted according to her cambric patterns, keeping ahead of
the flying needles of the other two. After her own little room, the mere
spaciousness of it seemed almost noble. She even liked it, when, about
half past one in the afternoon, on matinee days, the chorus-girls of the
show now drawing to the end of its run, began dawdling in, passing
shrill jokes with Bill Flynn, the fireman, rummaging through the mail in
the letter-box, casually unfastening their clothes all the while,
preliminary to kimonos and make-up, gathering in little knots about the
sewing-machines and exclaiming in