dress rehearsal came the excitement of "making up" under Pittsey's direction—for Pittsey was acting as the head of the supers and when Don had put on the top hat, the frock-coat and the other morning wear of an English gentleman of fashion on the stage, he smiled at himself in the pier-glass of the dressing-room, stroking, like a dandy, with his gloved fingers, the gummed moustache that was tickling on his upper lip. For the first time, the element of "make-believe" in the work appealed to him.
Kidder, the agent—who not only furnished the supernumeraries but acted as a sort of overseer of them when they were not on the stage—came into the room on his round of the theatres, and complimented Don on his appearance. "That looks well on you," he said, with intent to flatter; for in his business of supplying "extras," he found it difficult to get youths of Don's intelligence and more difficult still to retain them. His praise was sweet to Don; and it added the final touch to his pleasure to find himself in a profession where such amenities were practised.
He raced upstairs after Pittsey, to take his place among those others who were to represent a crowd of promenaders on the Strand, in the first scene of the play; and now the game of make-believe was gorgeously coloured and dazzlingly alight. He smiled at the boys in their grease-paint that gave them the complexion of young Sioux, and at the girls in their rouge that added, in its exaggeration of unreality, a charm of something romantic to their young cheeks. When the stage manager called: "Take
