"One of your pipe-dreams, Nance! It must have been one of the other boarders, or the wash woman. Stop your mooning over there by the window and get yourself dressed; we got just thirty-five minutes to get down to the theater."
Nance shook off her misgivings and rushed headlong into her adventure. It was no time to dream of Dan and the letter she was going to write him, or to worry about a disturbing whistle in the street, or a mysterious whisper on the other side of the door. Wasn't it enough that she, Nance Molloy, who only yesterday was watching funerals crawl by in Cemetery Street, was about to dance to real music, on a real stage, before a great audience? She had taken her first mad plunge into the seething current of life, and in these first thrilling, absorbing moments she failed to see the danger signals that flashed across the darkness.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST NIGHT
At a quarter-past eight in the dressing-rooms of the Gaiety, pandemonium reigned. Red birds, fairies, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps flitted about, begging, borrowing, stealing articles from each other in good-humored confusion. In and out among them darted the little bear, slapping at each passerby with her furry paws, practising steps on her cushioned toes, and rushing back every now and then to Birdie, who stood before a mirror in red tights, with a towel around her neck, putting the final touches on her make-up.
It was hot and stuffy, and the air reeked with grease paint. There was a perpetual chatter with occasional outbursts of laughter, followed by peremptory commands of "Less noise down there!" In the midst of the hub-bub a call-boy gave the signal for the opening number of the chorus; the chatter and giggling ceased, and the bright costumes settled into a definite line as the girls filed up the stairs.
Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck.
As she sat there the wardrobe woman, a matronly-looking, Irish person, came up and ordered her peremptorily to get off the trunk. Nance not only complied, but she offered her assistance in getting it out of the passage.
"May ye have some one as civil as ye are to wait on ye when ye are as old as I am!" said the woman. "It's your first night, eh?"
"Yep. Maybe my last for all I know. They 're trying me out."