What's-His-Name. George Barr McCutcheon

getting on the stage.

      Harvey procured a position in a confectioner’s establishment in State Street and she went to work for a photographer, taking her lessons in dancing, singing, and elocution at odd hours. She was pretty, graceful, possessed of a lovely figure not above the medium height; dark-haired and vivacious after a fashion of her own. As her pleased husband used to say, 50 she “got a job on the stage before you could say Jack Robinson.” He tried to get into the chorus with her, but the management said, “No husbands need apply.”

      That was the beginning of her stage career, such a few years ago that she was amazed when she counted back. It seemed like ten years, not five.

      She soared; he dropped, and, as there was no occasion for rousing himself, according to the point of view established by both of them, he settled back into his natural groove and never got beyond his soda-fountain days in retrospect.

      The next night after the little supper at Nellie’s a most astonishing thing happened. A smallish man with baby-blue eyes appeared at the box-office window, gave his name, and asked for a couple of good seats in Miss Duluth’s name. The ticket-seller had him repeat the name and then gruffly told him to see the company manager.

      “I’m Miss Duluth’s husband,” said the smallish man, shrinking. The tall, flashily good-looking man at his elbow straightened up and looked at him with a doubtful expression in his eyes. He was Mr. Butler, Harvey’s 51 next-door neighbour in Tarrytown. “You must be new here.”

      “Been here two years,” said the ticket-seller, glaring at him. “See the manager.”

      “Where is he?”

      “At his hotel, I suppose. Please move up. You’re holding the line back.”

      At that moment the company’s press representative sauntered by. Nellie’s husband, very red in the face and humiliated, hailed him, and in three minutes was being conducted to a seat in the nineteenth row, three removed from the aisle, followed by his Tarrytown neighbour, on whose face there was a frozen look of disgust.

      “We’ll go back after the second act,” said Harvey, struggling with his hat, which wouldn’t go in the rack sideways. “I’ll arrange everything then.”

      “Rotten seats,” said Mr. Butler, who had expected the front row or a box.

      “The scenery is always better from the back of the house,” explained his host, uncomfortably.

      “Damn the scenery!” said Mr. Butler. “I never look at it.” 52

      “Wait till you see the setting in the second––” began Harvey, with forced enthusiasm, when the lights went down and the curtain was whisked upward, revealing a score of pretty girls representing merry peasants, in costumes that cost a hundred dollars apiece, and glittering with diamond rings.

      Mr. Butler glowered through the act. He couldn’t see a thing, he swore.

      “I should think the husband of the star could get the best seats in the house,” he said when the act was half-over, showing where his thoughts were.

      “That press agent hates me,” said Harvey, showing where his had been.

      “Hates you? In God’s name, why?”

      “I’ve had to call him down a couple of times,” said Harvey, confidentially. “Good and hard, too.”

      “I suppose that’s why he makes you take a back seat,” said Butler, sarcastically.

      “Well, what can a fellow do?” complained the other. “If I could have seen Mr.—”