Figure of eight [antikvár]

PRELUDE ON A JUNE EVENING, JUST OVER A YEAR BEFORE THE War, seven of the eight girls in dressing-room No. 45 of the Orient Palace of Varieties were preparing themselves as rapidly as possible for their appearance in the ballet divertissement with which the performance opened. Conversation was by now restricted to demands for the help of Mrs. Pilkington, the stout elderly dresser, to mend this hole or sew that button on the scarlet blazers or white flannel trousers in which the first line of boys would presently make their first entrance as Henley oarsmen in On the River. The warm June dusk had kept everybody dallying by the shop-windows of Regent Street or Shaftesbury Avenue or Leicester Square, and the boy had called the quarter of an hour some time ago. 'Here, wherever is Maudie Chapman?' asked Madge Wilson, a pretty round-faced girl with fluffy fair hair and hot blue eyes, the irises of which were ringed with a darker shade. 'She'll be off for our first dance if she doesn't look sharp.' At that moment in answer to the question the dressing-room door burst open and Maudie Chapman, puffing with the exertion of having run up eighty stone stairs without a rest, came hurrying in. 'Maudie,' her companions shrieked in chorus, 'they'll be calling the beginners in two-twos! You are the limit, MaudeeV 'You'll be fined.' 'You haven't half got a nerve coming in now.' But Maudie Chapman did not reply. She stood leaning against the wide deal board before which she should long ago have been sitting down on the deal form to dress, and shook her head hopelessly. 'What's the matter, Maudie Chapman? Are you canned?' asked Irene Dale, turning contemptuously towards the last comer those speedwell-blue eyes of hers in which ardour and a listless indifference were strangely mixed. 'No, I'm not canned,' Maudie replied. 'Only, as I was changing buses at Hyde Park Corner I suddenly remem- , I ! : : I ! - : i ' .