"Wheer art off, Sorry?"
"Lumley."
"Houghton's Endeavour?"
"Ah."
"Rotten."
So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we
anticipate.
Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His
pictures were: "The Human Bird," which turned out to be a ski-ing
film from Norway, purely descriptive; "The Pancake," a humorous
film: and then his grand serial: "The Silent Grip." And then, for
Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a lady in innumerable
petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an
arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and
a cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn
was The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other's backs and
up and down each other's front, and stood on each other's heads and
on their own heads, and perched for a moment on each other's
shoulders, as if each of them was a flight of stairs with a landing,
and the three of them were three flights, three storeys up, the top
flight continually running down and becoming the bottom flight,
while the middle flight collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.
Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called
"Welcome All": a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On
the Monday morning there was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She
played "Welcome All," and then took the thumbed sheets which Miss
Poppy Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was rather exacting. As
she whirled her skirts she kept saying: "A little faster,
please"--"A little slower"--in a rather haughty, official voice that
was somewhat muffled by the swim of her drapery. "Can you give it
_expression_?" she cried, as she got the arum lily in full blow, and
there was a sound of real ecstasy in her tones. But why she should
have called "Stronger! Stronger!" as she came into being as a cup
and saucer, Alvina could not imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying
herself a strong cup of tea.
However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and
then, in a hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of
the show. She scorned to count "Welcome All." Mr. May said Yes. She
was the first item. Whereupon she began to raise a dust. Mr.
Houghton said, hurriedly interposing, that he meant to make a little
opening speech. Miss Poppy eyed him as if he were a cuckoo-clock,
and she had to wait till he'd finished cuckooing. Then she said:
"That's not every night. There's six nights to a week." James was
properly snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a
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