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[Illustration:  THE BREAKING OF THE FETTERS.]

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ELLA REEVE.

One can’t be too careful how one boasts, especially if there is the chance of the boast being put quickly to the proof.  In fact, it is better perhaps not to boast at all.

I was sitting with a friend and a stranger in a London restaurant, having joined their table for coffee.  The stranger, on introduction, turned out to be connected with the stage in some capacity as agent, and among his regular clients were the managers of various big provincial theatres, for whom he provided the leading lights of pantomime, or, as he would call it, panto.  Panto was indeed the mainstay of his business; it was even the warp and woof of his life.  He lived for panto, he thought panto, and he talked panto.  No one, according to him, had a more abysmal knowledge of principal boys with adequate legs, principal (if that is still the word) girls with sufficient voices, contralto fairy queens with abundant bosoms, basso demon kings, Prince Dandinis, Widow Twankays, Ugly Sisters, and all the other personages of this strange grease-paint mythology of ours.  Listening to him, I learned—­as those who are humble in spirit may learn of all men.  I learned, for example, that Ugly Sisters are at Christmas-time always Ugly Sisters, and very often use again the same dialogue, merely transferring themselves from, say, Glasgow to Wigan, or from Bristol to Dublin; and this will be their destiny until they become such very old men that not even the kindly British public will stand it any longer.  England, it seems, is full of performers who, touring the halls from March to December, are then claimed for panto as her own, arriving a little before Christmas not less regularly than the turkey; and the aim of all of them is as nearly as possible to do the next Christmas what they did last Christmas.

Not only did my new acquaintance know all these people, their capabilities and the lowest salary that could be offered to them with any chance of acceptance, but he was also, it seemed, beloved by them all.  Between agent and client never in the history of the world had such charming relations subsisted as between every pro. on his books and himself.

It was then that Ella Reeve came in.

Accompanied by two expensive-looking men, whose ancestors had beyond any doubt crossed the Red Sea with Moses, this new and glittering star, who had but just “made good,” or “got over,” or “clicked” (my new acquaintance used all these phrases indiscriminately when referring to his own Herschellian triumphs as a watcher of the skies), walked confidently to a distant table which was being held in reserve for her party, and drew off her gloves with the happy anticipatory assurance of one who is about to lunch a little too well. (All this, I should say, happened before the War.  I am reminded of it to-day by the circumstance that I have just heard of the death of the agent whom I then met.)