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Mr. McEachern sat in the billiard room smoking. He was alone. From where he sat he could hear distant strains of music. The more rigorous portion of the evening's entertainment, the theatricals, was over, and the nobility and gentry, having done their duty by sitting through the performance, were now enjoying themselves in the ballroom. Everybody was happy. The play had been quite as successful as the usual amateur performance. The prompter had made himself a great favourite from the start, his series of duets with Spennie having been especially admired, and Jimmy, as became an old professional, had played his part with great finish and certainty of touch, though, like the bloodhounds in the performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin, on tour, he had had poor support. But the audience bore no malice.
No collection of individuals is less vindictive than an audience at amateur theatricals. It was all over now. Charteris had literally gibbered in the presence of eyewitnesses at one point in the second act, when Spennie, by giving a wrong cue, had jerked the play abruptly into Act III (where his colleagues, dimly suspecting something wrong, but not knowing what, had kept it for some two minutes, to the mystification of the audience); but now even he had begun to forget. As he two-stepped down the room the lines of agony on his face were softened. He even smiled.