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their box.
    ‘Now there’s a high old scene!’ said Cribb with undisguised relish. The position of their box, some ten feet above stage-level and actually built on to the fore-stage, gave a view of the entire auditorium, brilliantly lit by six huge sun-burners turned fully on. Nine rows of tables extended from the orchestra pit along the length of the sanded floor into shadow and smoke beneath the circle. There, shopmen and clerks sat in hundreds, in snowy shirts and dress-suits with recklessly cut-down waistcoats and protruding crimson handkerchiefs—the swells of Southwark that night for two shillings and the price of a buttonhole. A barrage of gin-born good humour passed between tables, punctuated by occasional sharp reports and cheers as somebody collapsed an opera hat or withdrew a cork. Women with cigarettes and painted eyes sat bonnet to bonnet with respectable wives and saucer-eyed children. At intervals the chorus of a music hall song rose and died somewhere in the hall to a measure of stamping feet. At the sides of the seated area beyond the railings and the promenades were the bars, glittering with brass and pewter, polished beer-pumps and gilded mirrors, where overworked waiters urged barmaids to hurry with their orders. Even when their trays were loaded, they still faced the frustration of struggling for a passage between the press of promenaders to reach the tables.
    Corinthian columns sprouted here and there as supports for the sixpenny gallery, which was fronted by an army of plaster and gilt cherubs pursuing buxom nymphs among the gas-brackets. Less lavishly, the bowler-hatted customers above were ranged on plank-seats without cushions. In the cheapest gallery above that, where up to a thousand of the lower orders massed, there were no seats provided—only crowd barriers to prevent a disaster.
    ‘Seeing it from this viewpoint,’ remarked Thackeray, ‘I’m uncommon thankful I don’t have to give a performance.’
    ‘At a wage of ten pounds or more I’d sing a couple of songs all right,’ said Cribb. ‘That’s more than the Chief Superintendent himself takes home. They say the Vital Spark—Miss Jenny Hill—is booked for more than fifty a week.’
    ‘I think they earn every penny of it, Sarge, skedaddling across London in cabs to fit in three or four halls a night.’
    Cribb sniffed. ‘I suppose you think you’re better off padding your hoof round Bermondsey all night for thirty-five bob a week, after thirty years’ service.’
    The opening of the door behind them stifled Thackeray’s reply.
    ‘Now ’ere’s two ’andsome gentlemen what look the sort to ’ave one of me kidney-pies,’ said the fat woman. ‘You won’t? They’re ’ot and fresh, I warrant you, gents. No? Perhaps I could fetch you up a plate of natives, then? Swill ’em down with your fizz.’
    Cribb glanced towards Thackeray, who had a weakness for oysters.
    ‘Not on thirty-five bob,’ the constable said with a smile.
    Action below, the arrival of the orchestra, was greeted with hoots and cheering from the auditorium. The sun-burners were turned low and the footlights flickered into tall, yellowish flames. The conductor took his stance among the instrumentalists and bowed with great seriousness. This evoked a storm of good-natured abuse, which he summarily quelled with the overture to ‘Carmen’.
    A waiter arrived in the box and was sent for two pints of Bass East India, ‘But don’t for a moment forget you’re on duty,’ Cribb warned Thackeray, shouting to compete with the orchestra. ‘At the first sign of an accident you’re going down on to that stage.’
    The constable nodded, and peered over the drop to the boards. He was no coward, but he had a shrewd idea that fourteen stone descending ten feet that way would add another name to the casualty-list. Fortunately the moulding on the front of the box suggested a safer route. By taking a hand-hold on a cupid’s upturned rump he could reach the curtain of