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436 contemplating the first scene, which was a Gothic archway, about two feet shorter than Mr Crummles, through which that gentleman was to make his first entrance, and now listening to a couple of people who were cracking nuts in the gallery, wondering whether they made the whole audience, when the manager himself walked familiarly up and accosted him. ‘Been in front tonight?’ said Mr Crummles. ‘No,’ replied Nicholas, ‘not yet. I am going to see the play.’ ‘We’ve had a pretty good Let,’ said Mr Crummles. ‘Four front places in the centre, and the whole of the stage-box.’ ‘Oh, indeed!’ said Nicholas; ‘a family, I suppose?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Mr Crummles, ‘yes. It’s an affecting thing. There are six children, and they never come unless the phenomenon plays.’ It would have been difficult for any party, family, or otherwise, to have visited the theatre on a night when the phenomenon did not play, inasmuch as she always sustained one, and not uncommonly two or three, characters, every night; but Nicholas, sympathising with the feelings of a father, refrained from hinting at this trifling circumstance, and Mr Crummles continued to talk, uninterrupted by him. ‘Six,’ said that gentleman; ‘pa and ma eight, aunt nine, governess ten, grandfather and grandmother twelve. Then, there’s the footman, who stands outside, with a bag of oranges and a jug of toast-and-water, and sees the play for nothing through the little pane of glass in the box-door--it’s cheap at a guinea; they gain by taking a box.’ ‘I wonder you allow so many,’ observed Nicholas. ‘There’s no help for it,’ replied Mr Crummles; ‘it’s always |