of poison, and should be strangled!”
The rehearsal went on. The hero got off his line. There was a slight outburst of frightfulness between the stage-manager and a Voice named Bill that came from somewhere near the roof, the subject under discussion being where the devil Bill’s “ambers” were at that particular juncture. Then things went on again until the moment arrived for Cyril’s big scene.
I was still a trifle hazy about the plot, but I had got on to the fact that Cyril was some sort of an English peer who had come over to America doubtless for the best reasons.
So far he had only had two lines to say. One was “Oh, I say!” and the other was “Yes, by Jove!”; but I seemed to recollect, from hearing him read his part, that pretty soon he was due rather to spread himself.
I sat back in my chair and waited for him to bob up.
He bobbed up about five minutes later. Things had got a bit stormy by that time. The Voice and the stage-director had had another of their love-feasts—this time something to do with why Bill’s “blues” weren’t on the job or something. And, almost as soon as that was over, there was a bit of unpleasantness because a flowerpot fell off a window-ledge and nearly brained the hero. The atmosphere was consequently more or less hotted up when Cyril, who had been hanging about at the back of the stage, breezed down centre