at the railway station—­he was able to post his aunt’s precious letter and slip into his stall in the dress-circle before the curtain rose.  The orchestra was rioting through a composition called ‘The Clang o’ the Wooden Shoon,’ as an appropriate introduction to a tragedy the scene of which was laid in Nineveh; the house seemed fairly full, and the air was heavy with that peculiar smell, a sort of doubtfully aromatic stuffiness, which is so grateful to the nostrils of playgoers.  Austin gazed around him with keen interest.  He had not been inside a theatre for years, and the vivid description that Mr Buskin had given him of the show he was about to witness filled him with pleasurable anticipation.  To all intents and purposes, the experience that awaited him was something entirely new; how, he wondered, would it fit into his scheme of life?  What room would there be, in his idealistic philosophy, for the stage?

Then the music came to an end in a series of defiant bangs, the curtain rolled itself out of sight, and a brilliant spectacle appeared.  The only occupant of the scene at first was a gentleman in a thick black beard and fantastic garb who seemed to have acquired the habit of talking very loudly to himself.  In this way the audience discovered that the gentleman, who was no less a personage than the Queen’s brother, was seriously dissatisfied with his royal brother-in-law, whose habits were of a nature which did not make for the harmony of his domestic circle.  Then soft music was heard, and in lounged Sardanapalus himself—­a glittering figure in flowing robes of silver and pale blue, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by a crowd of slaves and women all very elegantly dressed; and it really was quite wonderful to notice how his Majesty lolled and languished about the stage, how beautifully affected all his gestures were, and with what a high-bred supercilious drawl he rolled out his behests that a supper should be served at midnight in the pavilion that commanded a view of the Euphrates.  And this magnificent, absurd creature—­this mouthing, grimacing, attitudinising popinjay, thought Austin, was no other than Mr Bucephalus Buskin, with whom he had chatted on easy terms in a common field only a few days previously!  The memory of the umbrella, the tight frock-coat, the bald head, the fat, reddish face, and the rather rusty “chimney-pot” here recurred to him, and he nearly giggled out loud in thinking how irresistibly funny Mr Buskin would look if he were now going through all these fanciful gesticulations in his walking dress.  The fact was that the man himself was perfectly unrecognisable, and Austin was mightily impressed by what was really a signal triumph in the art of making up.