felt it necessary to appear, and went gravely about his important task.
First treating the pores of his face to a filling of cold cream,—all the books agreed in this,—John chose a dark flesh color from among his grease paints and proceeded to give himself a swarthy Spanish complexion. Judging that this swarthiness was too somber, he proceeded next to mollify it by the over-laying of a lighter flesh tint; but later, in an effort to redden the cheeks, he got on too much color and was under the necessity of darkening it again. Thus alternately lightening and darkening, experimenting and re-experimenting, seven o'clock found him with a layer of grease paint, somewhere about an eighth of an inch thick masking his features into almost complete immobility.
Next he turned attention to the eyes, blackening the lashes and edging the lids themselves with heavy mourning. At the outer corners of the eyes he put on a smear of white to drive the eye in toward the nose; between the corner of the eye and the nose, he was careful to deepen the shadow. This was to make his eyes appear close together. Down the bridge of the nose he drew a straight white stripe to make that organ high and thin and narrow; while in the corner between the cheek and nostril went another smear of white, to drive the nose up still higher and sharper.
In the midst of this artistry, Jarvis Parks, the character man, who had been assigned to dress with Hampstead, entered.
"Hello," said John, with an attempt at unconcern.
"Hard at it," commented Parks, and began with the ease of long practice to arrange his make-up materials about him, after which deftly, and almost without looking at what he was doing, he transformed himself into a youthful, rosy-cheeked, navy chaplain.
