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through their paces, were shouted at to stop, and stood about dough-faced, rubbing their arms, until they were jerked into action again by the agitated voice of the producer.
    At intervals, Miss Doris Miller came wearily on to the stage in different changes of costume. She was a sharp-featured henna-head, with the powder thick on the pouches under her eyes, an old-fashioned hour-glass figure, and legs that tapered like cones into wondrously slim ankles and tiny feet. Since she was the principal boy, her costumes consisted of various tunics and jerkins over the long, pyramidal stretch of black nylon tights. The tights were the most expensive part of her costume. If a stage-hand brushed past her with a piece of scenery, she would clap her hands to her thighs and shriek out: ‘Mind my tights, you clumsy sod!‘
    Each time the principal boy left the stage, Virginia wondered whether she could get up and go through the pass-door at the side of the stage, and beard her in her dressing-room for the promised interview. Each time, just when she had mustered enough nerve to do it, Doris Miller, who only had to changefrom the waist up, was back on the stage again in a new outfit, and Virginia had lost her chance. The little old man in the fisherman’s jersey went in and out of the pass-door all the time, grumbling to himself. Virginia moved to the end of the row so that she could tackle him as he went by.
    ‘What can I do?’ Virginia appealed to him. ‘I must see Miss Miller. Does she know I’m here? The interview was all arranged. Do you think I could go backstage and find her?’
    ‘You can’t do that,’ the old man said. ‘Backstage is like a mad-house, and Miss Miller don’t talk to anyone. My, what a temper! I wish you’d have seen her just now. Created bloody murder when she heard there was a chap from the
Courier
at the stage-door. And language! Had him thrown out, block and tackle.’
    ‘Oh, good.’ Virginia’s spirits rose to the challenge. Although she could not understand why Doris Miller was so squeamish about the publicity she surely needed, the eviction of the
Courier
was a good chance for its rival, the
Gazette.
She must take the chance.
    ‘Side by side!’ squeaked the chorus, their thin voices falling away from the note as they kicked their way breathlessly offstage, arms on each other’s shoulders. Virginia waited until the producer was watching the Lancashire comedian in one of his Dame costumes, and slipped excitedly through the pass-door to the chaotic world backstage.
    She found her way past ropes and pieces of scenery and gimcrack boats and coaches to a narrow stone passage-way, which led to a twisting flight of green stone stairs. Flattening herself against the wall as an avalanche of sturdy girls in feathers and cockatoo bustles clattered past her with darned woollen shawls over their shoulders, she climbed the stairs to an upper passage where the dressing-rooms were. She walked along the scarred and peeling doors, which appeared to be always kicked open, and looked at the half-obliterated numbers. There were no names on any of them.
    A man came out of one of the rooms in a tail-coat with frayed satin lapels, his dickey and clip-on white bow-tie stained with ochre grease-paint. When Virginia inquired for Doris Miller’s room, he asked: ‘You her daughter?’
    ‘I? No, of course not.’
    ‘Well, kid, I just thought. She’s got a grown-up daughter, I know. Sings in cabaret up West. But I don’t suppose she’d let her come down here. She doesn’t like to be seen with her, they say. Made the girl take a different name, so no one would know she had a daughter that old.’ He lit a cigarette and leaned against the scribbled wall, holding the cigarette downwards into the palm of his nicotine-stained hand.
    ‘What’s she like?’
    The man seemed friendly. His painted smile was wide, showing chipped, badly-spaced teeth. ‘The daughter? Bit of all right, from her pictures.’
    ‘No, I mean Miss