“Wilkie Bard, of course,” said Uncle Phil.
“Has anybody here seen Kelly?” inquired the old lady. It appeared that every single person there, including the occupants of Box B, either had seen or hoped to see Kelly.
And then quite suddenly the lights went out, the orchestra rolled in semi-darkness, something happened to the scenery, the lights went up again, and there was a kitchen in the ancestral halls of Baron de No-Cash.
Again crowed the Babe with pleasure, and he had a perfect right to do so; because it was really a remarkable sort of a kitchen, larger by far than the one in Eaton Place where cook kept the marmalade; though, doubtless, what most intrigued the fancy of the Babe was the enormous fireplace which had accommodation for a turnspit and at least twenty-four persons.
In the temporary absence of any single human individual the turnspit had the stage all to itself. This was a subtle device on the part of the management. An air of rapt expectation enfolded the great audience, as of something going to happen.
And something did.
A perfect roar of enthusiasm heralded the happening of the something. Now what do you suppose it was? Nothing less than the arrival of the Principal Girl.
She just wandered in, no-how as it were, with a broom in her hand and her skirt in tatters, and a red cap over her curls and her feet in slippers. She was merely the maid of all work in the kitchen of the Baron de No-Cash, a downtrodden creature according to legend and according to the libretto, but you would hardly have thought so, since she had to stand bowing for two whole minutes over her broom handle before she was allowed to proceed with the business of life.
The roar reverberated from the roof of the gallery to the floor of the pit. Kids in boxes, kids in stalls, kids in the dress circle, and an infant in arms at the back of the pit all did their best; and responsible middle-aged gentlemen from the Kaffir Circus and the Rubber Market, a grandee from the Home Department, a judge of the Court of King’s Bench, a solicitor who had applied the money of his clients to his own purposes, although nobody had found him out at present, a substantial family from Hammersmith, the proprietor of a flourishing Brixton laundry, whose eldest girl was in the ballet, an old charwoman in the front row of the gods, and a thousand and one other heterogeneous elements whom we are only able to refer to in the most general terms, assisted Marge and Timothy and Alice Clara, and Dick and the Babe to make the welkin behave frightfully foolish, over a rather plain-looking girl of twenty-four who had to keep bowing over her broom handle before she could get on with the business of life.
And when at last she was able to get on with the business of life, what do you suppose it was? Why, to sing, of course, “Come with me to Arcadee.” What in the world else do you suppose her business in life could be?