Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/85

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box to keep her in good condition for the performance. The other puppets, who had no such luck, were very jealous. Cinderella's older sisters kept complaining throughout the show that she smelt disgustingly of cheese. The Prince, who had been left out in the sun after rehearsals, had very bad luck. He was a handsome fellow, with bright blue painted eyes. But his nose drooped, his cheeks sagged, his chin slipped. The blue from one eye trickled down almost to his neck. It changed his whole career. When the theatre reopened in the autumn he could never again play parts as a Leading Juvenile. They tried to lift his face but it had fallen too far. He was given skirts and had to be a Wicked Fairy. This was great bitterness to him, and accounted for his success in this new character. The tragedy of his private life gave a fine savagery to his acting.

The marionettes, whose bodies and limbs are cut out of cardboard and cunningly jointed together with loops of string, get very bored in their periods of idleness. They lie all hunched up, just as they have been tumbled into the box, and have pins-and-needles feelings in their legs. But they do not lose heart, for they never know