Stanway, formed the staple of the eager conversation, though here and there a sober couple would be discussing the tramcars or the quinquennial assessment exactly as if Gilbert and Sullivan had never been born.  It appeared that Milly had a future, that she was the best Patience yet seen in the district amateur or professional, that any burlesque manager would jump at her, that in five years, if she liked, she might be getting a hundred a week, and that Dolly Chose, the idol of the Tivoli and the Pavilion, had not half her style.  It also appeared that Milly had no brains of her own, that the leading man had taught her all her business, that her voice was thin and a trifle throaty, that she was too vulgar for the true Savoy tradition, and that in five years she would have gone off to nothing.  But the optimists carried the argument.  Sundry men who had seen Meshach in the second row of the stalls expressed a keen desire to ask the old bachelor point-blank what he thought of his nephew’s daughter; but Meshach did not happen to come into the Tiger.

When the crowd had thinned somewhat, Harry Burgess entered hurriedly and called for a whisky and potass, which the barmaid, who fancied him, served on the instant.

‘I wanted to get a wreath,’ he confided to her.  ’But Pointon’s is closed.’

‘Why, Mr. Burgess,’ she said smiling, ’there’s a lot of flowers in the coffee-room, and with them and the leaves off that laurel down the yard, and a bit of wire, I could make you one in no time.’

‘Can you?’ He seemed doubtful.

‘Can I!’ she exclaimed.  ’I should think I could, and a beauty!  As soon as these gentleman are gone——­’

‘It’s awfully kind of you,’ said Harry, brightening.  ’Can you send it round to me at the artists’ entrance in half an hour?’

She nodded, beaming at the prospect.  The manufacture of that wreath would be a source of colloquial gratification to her for days.

Harry politely responded to such remarks as ’Devilish good show, Burgess,’ drank in one gulp another whisky and potass, and hastened away.  The remainder of the company soon followed; the barmaid disappeared from the bar, and her assistant was left languidly to watch a solitary pair of topers who would certainly not leave till the clock showed eleven.

* * * * *

The auditorium during the entr’acte was more ceremonious, but not less noisy, than the bar-parlour of the Tiger.  The pleasant warmth, the sudden increase of light after the fall of the curtain, the certainty of a success, and the consciousness of sharing in the brilliance of that success—­all these things raised the spirits, and produced the loquacity of an intoxication.  The individuality of each person was set free from its customary prison and joyously displayed its best side to the company.  The universal chatter amounted to a din.