The boxes were full of wonderfully well-dressed men and women. How beautiful women can look in this great country, dressed in every colour of the rainbow! Men are of less account in America; but they looked well enough, too, in black coats and white shirt-bosoms.
After awhile the heavenly music stopped, the curtain on the stage rolled up, and the play began.
At first it was entrancing, magnificent—the stage-furnishings, gorgeously dressed women, clever-looking men, all acting a part—a lovely world without anything to mar it, right there in that small space of the stage before our eyes.
Then a woman, the star actress, came in wearing a very décolleté gown (I am getting hardened to them now), and began to talk in a manner I never had imagined people in good society would talk—right before those hundreds of men and women. I'll not write it down; I do not wish to remember it. But the party of women on the stage, instead of being shocked or ashamed, all laughed little, rippling, merry laughs. My cheeks burned, and I did not dare to look at anybody, not even Uncle Theodore.
After that I could not like the theatre any more and drawing away within myself, I looked and listened as if the actors had been hundreds of miles from me.
When the play was over and we were on the way home Uncle Theodore said: "If I had known the nature of the play, I would not have taken you to-night, Pearl."
"But I," I cried, "I am only one! There were hundreds of people being educated as well as I!"
Uncle Theodore turned and looked at me quickly; then he said coldly:
"My dear, you have a great deal yet to learn."