It was five o'clock by the time Jacobus snapped irritably: "You'll _have_ to do, anyhow"; but as afternoon tea was not a custom in the Human Flower Company, they missed little by absence from the hotel. Still, Loveland had found no chance for a private word with Lillie, who remained ignorant of his acquaintance with Bill Willing.
At six o'clock a meal, which called itself supper, was ready; and having bolted a cold edition of dinner, eked out with tinned peaches and cups of tea, actors and actresses marched forth in a body to begin the evening's work.
The curtain did not rise until half past seven, but this was Saturday night, and the town was eager for its entertainment. The young girls and their escorts liked nothing better than to see the "show men and women" walk past them up the hall, on the way to that thrilling region known as "behind the scenes," therefore at least a score of persons were seated in the dismal auditorium, munching apples or candy, and cracking peanuts, when the Human Flower and her company filed in.
A few little boys on the cheap benches at the back whistled, clapped their hands, stamped on the floor, and made "cat calls" as a greeting to the players, but those saluted took no notice, and skurried by like hunted things. Miss St. Clare hastened to her seat at the piano, near which an elderly quadroon had already begun to tune a fiddle, and melancholy Mr. Winter remained at the door to help the ticket seller, until it should be time for him to "make up" as the heroine's millionaire parent.
The gentlemen of the company (Loveland had already learned that they never spoke of each other as mere "men") dressed behind one partition, the ladies behind another, and the crowding could scarcely have been worse in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Nevertheless, everyone was more or less good natured. Costumes of a sort, and odds and ends of grease paints were offered to Loveland who, to his own surprise, was shaking and perspiring oddly with stage fright.
"What rot!" he roughly scolded himself. "As if an audience in a tenth-rate country village mattered! What do I care whether or not I know my part, or what they think of me?"
But the queer fact remained that he did care, and his heart thumped faster than it had thumped when he was roused one dark night to fight his first battle. As he saw what personable looking men his companions became after manipulating a few bits of grease-paint, putting on wigs and carefully-kept stage costumes, he began in spite of himself to take this queer theatrical engagement of his more seriously. He wanted to act well; he wanted to please Lillie de Lisle, and to satisfy Ed Binney, who was wishing him luck; he wanted to make a good impression on the pretty bright-eyed country girls who had stared at him with interest as he passed through the auditorium.