Thus the evening that had begun so ill ended in tenderness and profound accord. The very last thing Mr. Dormouse murmured as he lay locked in his wife’s arms was that she was the cleverest little actress in the world, and pretty enough to eat, and a million times too good for him--which on the whole was the truest thing Dormouse had said for a long while, and showed that his ideas were improving. Little though he knew it he was improving in every way, and could he have set himself back six months he would have been astounded at the contrast. Women make men in other senses than the physical, and this robust lump of egoism, selfishness, ignorance and conceit was being slowly and unconsciously transformed. Something of Phyllis was passing into him, and in the magic of that soul-infiltration the grosser side of him had begun to crumble.
It is disappointing to chronicle that the altered and improved rendering of the English captain passed almost unnoticed. Mr. Kemmel, O’Dowd’s right-hand man, indeed had objected to the change; and failing to bully Adair into submission had carried the affair up to the star. But that comedian, with a kindness that bordered on a sublime indifference, refused to interfere. "Hell, it don’t matter how he plays it as long as he gets the words over," was his sage comment; and a wave of a large, fat hand dismissed the subject for ever. O’Dowd had his own private reasons for wishing to stay on good terms with Adair, which he was too regal, if not too cautious, to pass on at that moment to Mr. Kemmel. O’Dowd, being star, manager, and half-author of the piece was minting money under all three heads, and his concern for the box-office was proportionately great--so great that he could consider the choice of an understudy without irritation, and even accept a man who might "draw."
On first being commanded to understudy his principal, Adair had accepted the task much in the spirit of Mary Ann, when she is told: "Oh, I forgot to say you must do the washing, too!" It was a drudgery and a bore that he would have been well content to avoid, for one look at O’Dowd’s red face and vigorous frame convinced him of the remoteness of the contingency for which he was to fit himself. He set no hopes in that direction, and it came to him as a real surprise, a couple of weeks after he was engaged, to be asked into the office and told of a new contract he was to sign.