CHAPTER IV. IN THE GREEN-ROOM.

THE Theatre Royal, Kilclare, stood in a retired
and obscure part of the town, at the end of a
dismal narrow street, one side of which consisted
of a dead wall which bounded the large gardens
of a Protestant clergyman, while the opposite
side was partly formed by the high, blank,
nearly windowless buildings of the back
portion of a convent of Sisters of Mercy. Its
front was adorned with a stumpy little portico
supported by brick pillars, on each of which
now hung a large green bill (technically termed
a poster), setting forth, with a lavish
expenditure of printer's ink, the intellectual feast
that awaited the Kilclare play-goers within the
building. I am too ignorant, of architecture to
be able to assign the theatre to any recognised
"order." Perhaps it belonged to none. But
it had two elements which I am told are
indispensable to great architectural effects; breadth
and simplicity. It was very wide, and its sole
ornament was a wash of pale yellow ochre,
which covered the whole surface, including the
brick pillars of the portico. Beneath the portico
were two green doors, one giving access to the
pit, and the other to the boxes. The gallery
entrance was at the back. At the back, also, in
a lane that was always very muddy in winter
and very dusty in summer, was the stage door.
Mysterious portal, giving access to a realm of
unknown enchantments, round which the little
boys of Kilclare—the shod and the shoeless
united in one crowd by the common instinct
strong in little boys to do whatever they are
expressly bidden to abstain from doing: which
instinct, as we all know, is quite peculiar to little
boys, and is never, never, found to survive in
big boys—would congregate for hours, peeping
and watching, and listening with breathless
interest to any sound of voices that might reach
their ears from the interior. Occasionally, the
little crowd would be routed and sent flying in
various directions by a vigorous sortie on the
part of the stage carpenter: a very irascible
personage, who would come out, hammer in
hand, growling and swearing in a manner that
was rendered inarticulately terrible by reason of
his mouth being full of tin tacks.

But the boys invariably reassembled very
shortly, and there Mabel found them when, on
Saturday morning, she accompanied her aunt
and Jack to rehearsal.

"Take care, Mabel," said Jack. "You'd
better give me your hand: "it's very dark.
Shall I help you, mother?"

"No, no. I know the way of old. Look
after Mabel; I can take care of myself."

Cautiously and slowly, for to eyes just come
from the outer daylight the way was absolutely
pitch-dark, Mabel followed her cousin, and,
ascending a short flight of rickety wooden
stairs, passed through a heavy swing door,
which he held open for her, and stood behind
the scenes of the Theatre Royal, Kilclare.

The interior of a theatre by day was no
new scene to Mabel Earnshaw, although she
had not been in one, except as a spectator,
for more than six years. The Kilclare theatre
was, of course, very small and very shabby;
but the shape of the audience-part of the house
was good, and the stage very spacious for the
size of the whole building. Potter, the irascible
carpenter, was hammering away at the
portcullis of Macbeth's castle, and the property-
man, Nix—who was also the messenger, bill-
deliverer, armourer, and general factotum of
the establishment, besides personating all the
invisible excited multitudes and leading the
huzzas of enthusiasm and the groans of
disaffection at the wing—was communicating a
lurid glare to the painted flames beneath the
witches' caldron by means of a judicious
distribution of little bits of red foil. From the
green-room came the thin tones of a fiddle.

"Oh, Mr. Trescott is here already, I hear,"
said Mrs. Walton. " He's always punctual."

Mabel followed her aunt into a long uncarpeted
room, with seats fixed all around the
wall, and the lower halves of the windows
whitewashed, to exclude prying eyes. In one
corner stood a bundle of spears, with tin tops,
and a crimson calico banner. There were also
two cane hoops, partially hidden by garlands
of pink and white paper flowers, which had
figured in some rural merry-making last season,
and which, having remained there ever since,
were now covered with a thick coating of dust.

About one-third of the extent of the room
was taken up by a temporary construction made
of scraps of old scenery to form a dressing-room;
the accommodation of that kind in the Kilclare
theatre having been originally provided on too
scanty a scale even for Mr. Moffatt's small
company of performers.

On the wooden chimney-piece stood a white
earthenware jug full of cold water, and a tumbler;
over it, hung a board covered with what had
once been crimson cloth, but which had now
faded into a dusty reddish brown; stuck on to
this board with pins, were two or three scraps
of paper containing "calls" and "notices:"
announcements, that is to say, of the hours of
rehearsal, and the pieces to be performed during
the week.

Such was the aspect of the green-room of
the Theatre Royal, Kilclare. When Mrs. Walton
and Mabel entered it, it was occupied by two
persons. One was Mr. Trescott, who, violin
in hand, was limping up and down, occasionally
playing a bar or two, and carelessly rasping
out a few chords. The other was a thin,
hatchet-faced old man, with a scorbutic
complexion and a curiously sour expression of
countenance. He was dressed in a threadbare brown
coat, coming down to his heels, and buttoned
tightly across his chest. He wore a pair of
large woollen gloves (although the weather was
bright and warm), and in the crown of his hat,
which stood on a chair beside him, was a very
big blue-checked cotton pocket-handkerchiet.
Perhaps I should have said that the room was
tenanted by three persons—certainly the sour-
visaged old man would have said so—for,
stretched at his master's feet, with his nose
between his fore-paws, lay a nondescript dog, bearing
more resemblance to a Scotch sheep-dog