When Mr. Martin came in that morning, he had other ideas than that of seeing applicants for places.  His show must begin in two weeks, and it was advertised to be larger and better than ever before, when really nothing at all had been done for it.  The promise of this advertisement must be fulfilled.  Mr. Martin was late, and was out of humour with every one else on account of it.  He came in hurried, fierce, and important.

“Mornin’, Mr. Smith, mornin’, Mrs. Jones.  Ha, ladies and gentlemen, all here?”

He shot every word out of his mouth as if the after-taste of it were unpleasant to him.  He walked among the chorus like an angry king among his vassals, and his glance was a flash of insolent fire.  From his head to his feet he was the very epitome of self-sufficient, brutal conceit.

Kitty trembled as she noted the hush that fell on the people at his entrance.  She felt like rushing out of the room.  She could never face this terrible man.  She trembled more as she found his eyes fixed upon her.

“Who ’s that?” he asked, disregarding her, as if she had been a stick or a stone.

“Well, don’t snap her head off.  It ’s a girl friend of mine that wants a place,” said Hattie.  She was the only one who would brave Martin.

“Humph.  Let her wait.  I ain’t got no time to hear any one now.  Get yourselves in line, you all who are on to that first chorus, while I ’m getting into my sweat-shirt.”

He disappeared behind a screen, whence he emerged arrayed, or only half arrayed, in a thick absorbing shirt and a thin pair of woollen trousers.  Then the work began.  The man was indefatigable.  He was like the spirit of energy.  He was in every place about the stage at once, leading the chorus, showing them steps, twisting some awkward girl into shape, shouting, gesticulating, abusing the pianist.

“Now, now,” he would shout, “the left foot on that beat.  Bah, bah, stop!  You walk like a lot of tin soldiers.  Are your joints rusty?  Do you want oil?  Look here, Taylor, if I did n’t know you, I ’d take you for a truck.  Pick up your feet, open your mouths, and move, move, move!  Oh!” and he would drop his head in despair.  “And to think that I ’ve got to do something with these things in two weeks—­two weeks!” Then he would turn to them again with a sudden reaccession of eagerness.  “Now, at it again, at it again!  Hold that note, hold it!  Now whirl, and on the left foot.  Stop that music, stop it!  Miss Coster, you ’ll learn that step in about a thousand years, and I ’ve got nine hundred and ninety-nine years and fifty weeks less time than that to spare.  Come here and try that step with me.  Don’t be afraid to move.  Step like a chicken on a hot griddle!” And some blushing girl would come forward and go through the step alone before all the rest.

Kitty contemplated the scene with a mind equally divided between fear and anger.  What should she do if he should so speak to her?  Like the others, no doubt, smile sheepishly and obey him.  But she did not like to believe it.  She felt that the independence which she had known from babyhood would assert itself, and that she would talk back to him, even as Hattie Sterling did.  She felt scared and discouraged, but every now and then her friend smiled encouragingly upon her across the ranks of moving singers.