Betty turned and walked in—stepped lightly to the side of the old woman where she sat before the fire in her armchair, her old watchful eyes fixed on the open door, and the child leaned forward and kissed her withered old cheek:
“I love you,” she said, “because you love Netherby; and you have his big kind eyes.”
The old lady put out her old hand and stroked the child’s head:
“But you are leaving Master Noll sadly out in the cold, my little lady,” she said.
Betty turned and looked at Noll:
“Oh no,” said she—“I love him in quite a different way.”
The old lady laughed.
The next morning being Betty’s birthday, she found at her door a sheet of stiff brown paper on which was fixed the print of “The Sower,” the whole set in a battered old picture-frame of Noll’s. It was the first birthday gift she had ever had—as long as she could remember....
The evening of her twelfth birthday Betty spent in the pit of a theatre.
The sound of the rushing feet of the theatre-goers passing eagerly into the pit in holiday humour; the rustle of silk and satin and the leisurely entrance of handsomely dressed women into the more gorgeous comfort of the stalls as they dawdled to their elaborate seats; the delicious tunings of violins as the bandsmen took their places in the orchestra; the burst of music; the echo of the stage carpenter’s hammer from the screened world hidden by the great curtain beyond the footlights; the lowering of lights and resulting sudden darkness in the theatre; the sharp clink of a bell for the ringing up of the curtain; the hushing into silence of the whispering audience; the slow uprolling of the great curtain as it was gathered into the flies; and the footlights disclosed another world, flinging its large picture upon the vision—the fantastic reality of the drama—a world that comes to life for a little while and holds the imagination as it were held by a dream.