It was not very light, and as Nicholas looked about him, ceiling, pit, boxes, gallery, orchestra, fittings, and decorations of every kind,—­all looked coarse, cold, gloomy and wretched.

“Is this a theatre?” whispered Smike, in amazement; “I thought it was a blaze of light and finery.”

“Why, so it is,” replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised; “But not by day, Smike,—­not by day.”

At this moment the manager’s voice was heard, introducing the new-comers, under the stage names of Johnson and Digby, to Mrs. Crummles, a portly lady in a tarnished silk cloak, with her bonnet dangling by the strings, and with a quantity of hair braided in a large festoon over each temple; who greeted them with great cordiality.

While they were chatting with her, there suddenly bounded on to the stage from some mysterious inlet, a little girl in a dirty white frock, with tucks up to the knees, short trousers, sandalled shoes, white spencer, pink gauze bonnet, green veil and curl papers, who turned a pirouette, then looking off in the opposite wing, shrieked, bounded forward to within six inches of the footlights, and fell into a beautiful attitude of terror, as a shabby gentleman in an old pair of buff slippers came in at one powerful slide, and chattering his teeth fiercely, brandished a walking-stick.

“They are going through, ‘The Indian Savage and the Maiden,’” said Mrs. Crummles.

“Oh!” said the manager, “the little ballet interlude.  Very good.  Go on.  A little this way, if you please, Mr. Johnson.  That’ll do.  Now!”

The manager clapped his hands as a signal to proceed, and the Savage, becoming ferocious, made a slide towards the Maiden; but the Maiden avoided him in six twirls, and came down, at the end of the last one, upon the very points of her toes.  This seemed to make some impression upon the Savage, for after a little more ferocity and chasing of the Maiden into corners, he began to relent, and stroked his face several times with his right thumb and forefingers, thereby intimating that he was struck with admiration of the Maiden’s beauty.  Acting upon the impulse of this passion, he began to hit himself severe thumps in the chest, and to exhibit other indications of being desperately in love, which, being rather a prosy proceeding, was very likely the cause of the Maiden’s falling asleep; whether it was or no, asleep she did fall, sound as a church, on a sloping bank, and the Savage, perceiving it, leant his left ear on his left hand, and nodded sideways, to intimate to all whom it might concern that she was asleep, and no shamming.  Being left to himself, the Savage had a dance all alone.  Just as he left off, the Maiden woke up, rubbed her eyes, got off the bank, and had a dance all alone too—­such a dance that the Savage looked on in ecstacy all the while, and when it was done, plucked from a neighboring tree some botanical curiosity, resembling a small pickled cabbage, and