We went a little further and dropped into another theater.

Here there were two children on the stage. Some grown-up people were
standing round them listening, in respectful attitudes, while the
children talked. They appeared to be lecturing about something.

Again we fled, swearing, and made our way to a third theater. They
were all children there. It was somebody or other's Children's
Company performing an opera, or pantomime, or something of that sort.

Our friend said he would not venture into another theater. He said he
had heard there were places called music-halls, and he begged us to
take him to one of these and not to tell his wife.

We inquired of a policeman and found that there really were such
places, and we took him into one.

The first thing we saw were two little boys doing tricks on a
horizontal bar.

Our friend was about to repeat his customary programme of flying and
cursing, but we restrained him. We assured him that he would really
see a grown-up person if he waited a bit, so he sat out the boys and
also their little sister on a bicycle and waited for the next item.

It turned out to be an infant phenomenon who sang and danced in
fourteen different costumes, and we once more fled.

Our friend said he could not go home in the state he was then; he felt