went home and spread himself like a young peacock before Jane, and
said: "I am an actor."

The girl's eyes glowed. "You are wonderful."

"No, not I," replied Paul modestly. "It is my star."

"Have you got a big part?" asked Jane.

He laughed pityingly, sweeping back his black curls. "No, you silly,
I haven't any lines to speak"--he had at once caught up the phrase--
"I must begin at the beginning. Every actor has to do it."

"You'll get mother and me orders to come and see you, won't you?"

"You shall have a box," declared Paul the magnificent.

Thus began a new phase in the career of Paul Kegworthy. After the
first few days of bewilderment on the bare, bleak stage, where
oddments of dilapidated furniture served to indicate thrones and
staircases and palace doors and mossy banks; where men and women in
ordinary costume behaved towards one another in the most ridiculous
way and went through unintelligible actions with phantom properties;
where the actor-manager would pause in the breath of an impassioned
utterance and cry out, "Oh, my God! stop that hammering!" where
nothing looked the least bit in the world like the lovely ordered
picture he had been accustomed to delight in from the shilling
gallery--after the first few days he began to focus this strange
world and to suffer its fascination. And he was proud of the silent
part allotted to him, a lazy lute-player in attendance on the great