Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/256

 hour was watched with eagerness. This was a life to keep the heart beating.

He had met Kidder, the "super's" agent, and been looked on with a favour which was largely of Walter Pittsey's procuring. "You're all right," Pittsey had assured him. "Kidder has a problem here, trying to get intelligent-looking supers. He has to pick up all sorts of bums and muckers to fill up his ranks. I've asked him to get us something together. I've told him you'll stay with him— though I'll go on the road if I can get a part. He's put us down for an English thing they're going to begin rehearsing next week."

That, Don felt, would be the beginning of his worldly progress; the rest would be merely a matter of time. And with his new pseudo-scientific theory of religion to comfort his doubts, his future began to regain some of the tints of happiness — the misty blue tints of distant peace. The figure in the immediate foreground of his outlook was still Miss Morris; but he had not yet had his confessional tête-a-tête with her, because she gave him no opportunity to do so. She carried herself among the actors on the street as if she were ashamed of being seen with them; and she admitted to Don that she was sorry to see him there. Why? "Because you'll never make a success of acting," she said. It's absurd." He tried to make her understand that he was not ambitious. "Then you should be," she replied. "At least you should be taking up some work that you can remain in all your life. I hope you don't intend to keep at this sort of thing."

"Why not?"