Rose accepted this proposition with a warm flush of gratitude.  It indicated, she felt, that they were still friendly toward her, disposed of certain misgivings she’d experienced the night before, lest in driving, unwittingly, so good a bargain with them, she had incurred their enmity.

But, from the moment her little salary began, she found herself retained, body and soul, exactly as Galbraith himself was.  They’d bought all her ideas, all her energy, all her time, except a few scant hours for sleep and a few snatched minutes for meals.  She gave her employers, up to the time when the piece opened at the Globe, at a conservative calculation, about five times their money’s worth.  Even if she hadn’t been in the company she’d have found something like two days’ work in every twenty-four hours, just in the wardrobe room.  Because the costumes were cheap and the frank blaze of borders, footlights and spots, pitilessly betrayed the fact.  One set for the ponies was so hopelessly bad that the owners refused to accept them, and Rose, on the spur of the moment, made up a costume—­they were uniform, fortunately—­to replace them.  The wardrobe mistress, with two assistants, and under Rose’s intermittent supervision, managed somehow to get them made.  And there wasn’t a single costume, outside Rose’s own twelve, that hadn’t to be remodeled more or less.

On top of all that, the really terrible grind of rehearsals began; property rehearsals, curiously disconcerting at first, where instead of indicating the business with empty hands, you actually lighted the cigarette, picked up the paper knife, pulled the locket out from under your dress and opened it—­and, in the process of doing these things, forgot everything else you knew; scenery rehearsals that caused the stage to seem small and cluttered up and actually made some of the evolutions you’d been routined in, impossible.  At last and ghastliest, a dress rehearsal, which began at seven o’clock one night and lasted till four the next morning.

It would all have been so ludicrously easy, Rose used to reflect in despair, if, like the other girls in the sextette, she’d had only her own part in the performance to attend to—­only to get into her costumes at the right time, be waiting in the wings for the cue, and then come on and do the things they’d taught her to do.  But, between Goldsmith and Block, who were now in a state of frantic activity and full of insane suggestions, and the wardrobe mistress who was always having to be told how to do something, every minute was occupied.  She would try desperately to keep an ear alert for what was happening on the stage, in order to be on hand for her entrances.  But, in spite of her, it sometimes happened that she’d be snatched from something by a furious roar from Galbraith.

“Miss Dane!” And then, when she appeared, bewildered, contrite.  “You must attend to the rehearsal.  Those other matters can be attended to at some other time.  If necessary, I can stop the rehearsal and wait till you’re at liberty.  But I can’t pretend to rehearse and be kept waiting.”