Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/267

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THE IDEALIST
255

tionate trust, although there was nothing in it but her usual friendship. She was worried by the fact that the failure of Mrs. Richardson's investments had forced them to practise the meanest economies. "I shall have to earn my living now, without joking. Do you want any more music lessons? Do you remember your first one? Are you keeping up your practice? Do not be surprised if you see me in New York suddenly, because we are actually afraid of being left here without money, so far from home, and mother is tired of travelling on nothing. I do not know what may happen. How are you getting on? Write to me here."

He wrote her a long impassioned reply that was a sort of confession of faith in her and in all the ideals which he associated with her in his thoughts; and he went to his rehearsals, with Walter Pittsey, in the stilted manner of a martyr who has been fortified by a secret communion with a priest of his religion.

He found that Miss Morris had been engaged as a "walking lady"—an extra" like himself. He supposed—from the way in which she avoided him—that Walter Pittsey had told her how he had betrayed his cousin.


For the first week, of course, he was drilled in his street clothes, on a stripped stage, in the choking twilight of a closed theatre, suffering all the indignities of being driven, with the herd of "supers," by a raucous stage manager who continually exhorted them to put more "guts" into their work—an expression which revolted Don like an indecency. But with the