And while tears of disappointment were yet swimming in my eyes, triumph sprang up in my heart at her last words; for if I could do exactly as I pleased, why, after all, she should have the new summer dress she needed so badly. So I took the money to our room, and having secreted it in the most intricate and involved manner I could think of, I returned and laid Mr. Ellsler's offer before my mother, who at first hesitated, but learning that Mrs. Bradshaw was engaged for another season, she finally consented, and I rushed back to the theatre, where, red and hot and out of breath, I was engaged for the ballet for the next season. After this I was conscious of a new feeling, which I would have found it very hard to explain then. It was not importance, it was not vanity, it was a pleasant feeling, it lifted the head and gave one patience to bear calmly many things that had been very hard to bear. I know now it was the self-respect that comes to everyone who is a bread-winner.

Directly after breakfast next day I was off to get my mother's dress. I went quite alone, and my head was well in the air; for this was indeed an important occasion. I looked long and felt gravely at the edges of the goods, I did not know what for, but I had seen other people do it, and when my lavender-flowered muslin was cut off, done up and paid for, I found quite a large hole in my six dollars; for it was war time, and anything made of cotton cost a dreadful price. But, good Heaven! how happy I was, and how proud that I should get a dress for my mother, instead of her getting one for me! Undoubtedly, had there been a fire just then, I would have risked my life to save that flowered muslin gown.

I had not been more than two or three days in the theatre when I discovered that its people seemed to be divided into two distinct parties—the guyers and the guyed—those who laughed and those who were laughed at. All my life I have had a horror of practical joking, and I very quickly decided I would not be among the guyed. I had borrowed many of Mrs. Bradshaw's play books to read, and often found in the directions for costumes the old word "ibid." "Count Rudolph—black velvet doublet, hose and short cloak. Count Adolph, ibid." So when the property-man, an incorrigible joker, asked me to go home and borrow Mrs. Bradshaw's ibid for him, I simply looked at him and smiled a broad, silent smile and never moved a peg. He gave me a sharp look, then affecting great anger at my laziness, he wrote a request for an ibid and gave it to the fattest girl in the crowd, and she carried it to Mrs. Bradshaw, who wrote on it that her ibid was at Mrs. Dickson's, and the fat girl went to Mrs. Dickson's, who said she had lent it to Mr. Lewis—so the poor fat goose was kept waddling through the heat, from one place to another, until she was half dead, to the great enjoyment of the property-man.

Next day he was very busy, when, glancing up, he saw me looking on at his work. Instantly he caught up a bottle, and said: "Run upstairs to the paint-frame (three flights up) and ask the painter to put a little ad-libitum in this bottle for me—there's a good girl!"

Now I did not yet know what ad-libitum meant, but I was a very close observer, and I saw the same malicious twinkle in his eye that had shone there when he had sent the fat girl on her hot journey, and once more I slowly chewed my gum, and smiled my wide, unbelieving smile. He waited a moment, but as I did not touch the bottle he tossed it aside, saying: "What a suspicious little devil you are!"

But when a man wanted me to blow down a gun-barrel next morning, the property-man exclaimed: "Here, you! let saucer-eyes alone! I don't know whether she gets her savey out of her head or chews it out of her gum, but she don't guy worth a cent, so you needn't try to put anything on to her!"

And from that day to this I have been free from the attacks of the practical joker.

CHAPTER SIXTH

The Regular Season Opens—I have a Small Part to Play—I am among Lovers of Shakespeare—I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under the Charm.

Up to this time the only world I had known had been narrow and sordid and lay chill under the shadow of poverty; and it is sunlight that makes the earth smile into flower and fruit and laugh aloud through the throats of birds. But now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, I began to learn something of another world—fairy-like in fascination, marvellous in reality. A world of sunny days and jewelled nights, of splendid palaces, caves of horror, forests of mystery, and meadows of smiling candor. All peopled, too, with such soldiers, statesmen, lovers, clowns, such women of splendid chill chastity, fierce ambition, thistle-down lightness, and burning, tragic love as made the heart beat fast to think of.