"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, to comfort
myself? I pretended I was Edward Kean waiting in the passages at Drury
Lane, with all the other fine fellows looking down at the shabby little
gloomy man from the provinces. That was conceit for you, wasn't it?"

The pathos of this was, of course, irresistible to Esther, and Mike was
thereupon hugged and kissed as he expected.

"Never mind," he said, "you'll see if I don't make something of the poor
little part after all."

And, thereupon, he described what he laughingly called his "conception,"
and how he proposed to dress and make up, so vividly that it was evident
that the pastry-cook's boy was already to him a personality whose
actions and interests were by no means limited to his brief appearance
on the stage, but who, though accidentally he had but few words to speak
before the audience, was a very voluble and vital little person in
scenes where the audience did not follow him.

"Yes, you see I'll do something with it. The best of a small part,"
said Mike, speaking as one of experience, "is that it gives you plenty
of opportunity for making the audience wish there was more of it."

"From that point of view, you certainly couldn't have a finer part,"
laughed Esther.