Inside the room, Mr Saltzburg wiped his forehead, spectacles, and his hands. He had the aspect of one wakes from a dreadful dream.
“Childrun!” he whispered brokenly. “Childrun! If yoll please, once more. Act One, Opening Chorus. Come! La-la-la!”
“La-la-la!” chanted the subdued members of the ensemble.
By the time the two halves of the company, ensemble and principals, melted into one complete whole, the novelty of her new surroundings had worn off, and Jill was feeling that there had never been a time when she had not been one of a theatrical troupe, rehearsing. The pleasant social gatherings round Mr Saltzburg’s piano gave way after a few days to something far less agreeable and infinitely more strenuous, the breaking-in of the dances under the supervision of the famous Johnson Miller. Johnson Miller was a little man with snow-white hair and the india-rubber physique of a juvenile acrobat. Nobody knew actually how old he was, but he certainly looked much too advanced in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and scolded more companies along the rocky road that leads to success than any half-dozen dance-directors in the country, in spite of his handicap in being almost completely deaf. He had an almost miraculous gift of picking up the melodies for which it was his business to design dances, without apparently hearing them. He seemed to absorb them through the pores. He had a blunt and arbitrary manner, and invariably spoke his mind frankly and honestly—a habit which made him strangely popular in a profession where the language of equivoque is cultivated almost as sedulously as in the circles of international diplomacy. What Johnson Miller said to your face was official, not subject to revision as soon as your back was turned: and people appreciated this.
Izzy’s willowy friend summed him up one evening when the ladies of the ensemble were changing their practise-clothes after a particularly strenuous rehearsal, defending him against the Southern girl, who complained that he made her tired.
“You bet he makes you tired,” she said. “So he does me. I’m losing my girlish curves, and I’m so stiff I can’t lace my shoes. But he knows his business and he’s on the level, which is more than you can say of most of these guys in the show business.”