From the first, there was no question which feature of the entertainment was the attraction extraordinary:  Verman—­Verman, the savage tattooed wild boy, speaking only his native foreign languages—­Verman was a triumph!  Beaming, wreathed in smiles, melodious, incredibly fluent, he had but to open his lips and a dead hush fell upon the audience.  Breathless, they leaned forward, hanging upon his every semi-syllable, and, when Penrod checked the flow, burst into thunders of applause, which Verman received with happy laughter.

Alas! he delayed not o’er long to display all the egregiousness of a new star; but for a time there was no caprice of his too eccentric to be forgiven.  During Penrod’s lecture upon the other curios, the tattooed wild boy continually stamped his foot, grinned, and gesticulated, tapping his tiny chest, and pointing to himself as it were to say:  “Wait for Me!  I am the Big Show.”  So soon they learn; so soon they learn!  And (again alas!) this spoiled darling of public favour, like many another, was fated to know, in good time, the fickleness of that favour.

But during all the morning performances he was the idol of his audience and looked it!  The climax of his popularity came during the fifth overture of the Schofield and Williams Military Band, when the music was quite drowned in the agitated clamours of Miss Rennsdale, who was endeavouring to ascend the stairs in spite of the physical dissuasion of her governess.

“I won’t go home to lunch!” screamed Miss Rennsdale, her voice accompanied by a sound of ripping.  “I will hear the tattooed wild boy talk some more!  It’s lovely—­I will hear him talk!  I will!  I will!  I want to listen to Verman—­I want to—­I want to——­”

Wailing, she was borne away—­of her sex not the first to be fascinated by obscurity, nor the last to champion its eloquence.

Verman was almost unendurable after this, but, like many, many other managers, Schofield and Williams restrained their choler, and even laughed fulsomely when their principal attraction essayed the role of a comedian in private, and capered and squawked in sheer, fatuous vanity.

The first performance of the afternoon rivalled the successes of the morning, and although Miss Rennsdale was detained at home, thus drying up the single source of cash income developed before lunch, Maurice Levy appeared, escorting Marjorie Jones, and paid coin for two admissions, dropping the money into Sam’s hand with a careless—­nay, a contemptuous—­gesture.  At sight of Marjorie, Penrod Schofield flushed under his new moustache (repainted since noon) and lectured as he had never lectured before.  A new grace invested his every gesture; a new sonorousness rang in his voice; a simple and manly pomposity marked his very walk as he passed from curio to curio.  And when he fearlessly handled the box of rats and hammered upon it with cool insouciance, he beheld—­for the first time in his life—­a purl of admiration eddying in Marjorie’s lovely eye, a certain softening of that eye.  And then Verman spake and Penrod was forgotten.  Marjorie’s eye rested upon him no more.