However, experience having taught him that the vigor of Polly’s protests tended to bear little relation to the severity of their cause, he made no effort to hasten his step as he strolled down a narrow passageway in the direction of the tiring room, from whence emanated the pitiable cries. Sounds of hammering and laughing voices came from the stage to his right. A lad, clutching a piece of planking taller than himself, scurried past at an imperative bellow from the scene-setters on stage. Nicholas pushed open the door to the tiring room, where he stood, for the moment unnoticed by its three occupants, surveying the scene. “Half an inch more, Lizzie.” Thomas Killigrew, perched on the edge of a tiring table, instructed the flushed and flustered tirewoman, who was struggling to tighten the laces of a bone corset behind a furiously complaining Polly. “It is impossible!” Polly yelped, gripping the back of a chair until her knuckles whitened. “I cannot breathe. You would suffocate me.”
