"I forgot. I was so excited about the play, but Aunt Helen asked, didn't she, mother?"
"Yes, her name is Bertha Metzger, and she lives over the other side of the market. Did I understand you to say, Jack, that you had seen her before?"
"Why, yes, didn't Jean tell you? She is the little girl we saw in the cemetery that Sunday, the one who had only a little candle and such a measly tiny bunch of flowers."
"And that is why you felt like doing this for her, I see."
"Of course that was it."
"Oh, Jack," exclaimed Jean again rapturously, "it was so lovely. The Princess Herzlieb was bee-yutiful, and the prince so handsome. It was like a real fairy-land with roses and things, and the fairy godmother lived in a cunning house, and had the dearest boy pigeons to carry her messages. They would flap their wings just like real pigeons, only they were people dressed up to look like pigeons. Then there was a funny fat old cook that made everybody laugh; you ought to have seen him, he was so ridiculous."
"I don't care," said Jack with pretended indifference.
"And the brother of the princess was changed into stone because he was a very bad boy, and the princess could break the spell only by going into the king's kitchen and working like a servant for a year, and in all that time she couldn't speak a word; if she did there would be no chance of her freeing her brother from the spell. Oh, it was so exciting I was so afraid she would have to speak."
"I don't care," said Jack, not quite so bravely.