A little well-timed assistance from Mr. Lover, which she really didn’t require, and away she soared straight up through the middle register, and at the same moment something seemed to go ping, ping, beneath the knitted waistcoat of chocolate worsted of the heir to the barony, standing at the back of Box B by the side of Father.
“Come with me to Arcadee.”
Uncle Phil accepted her invitation without the slightest hesitation—we are not so sure as we should like to be about Father—but Nannas Helen and Lucy, and Marge and the rest of ’em, indeed an overwhelming majority of that crowded and representative assembly, went straight to Arcadee with that rather plain young woman who was suffering from a cold in the head.
We call her plain as much out of deference to Mr. G-lsw-rthy, and Mr. H. G. W-lls and Mr. Arnold B-nn-tt as any other reason we can think of. Because in the opinion of the heir to the barony she was already enshrined as “a nailer,” and no girl absolutely and unmistakably plain could possibly have been granted the highest of all diplomas by one of such a ripe experience of all phases and degrees of womanhood.
No, Mr. G-lsw-rthy, perhaps not a patrician beauty, like the daughter of whom we wot, still plain is not the word exactly. Can you call any young woman plain, who, attired in her nondescript manner, hypnotizes the whole of Drury with her tiny handkerchief edged with lace, every time she plucks it out of her tatterdemalia?
Plain?—no, sir, decidedly not. A plain girl could never hypnotize the whole of Drury with her handkerchief, including an austere old gentleman in the second row of the stalls, allowing a question of taxed costs to stand over till the following Tuesday. Plain, Mr. G-lsw-rthy!—we at least, and the heir to the barony are forced to dissent.
“She’s a nailer. What’s her name?” said Uncle Phil.
Father lowered his sombre eyes, and shook his head at Uncle Philip. He had not gone to Arcadee with the Principal Girl, you see. Upon a day another Principal Girl had lured him thither, and Father had had to come back again, and Father was feeling that he wanted never to go any more to Arcadee—except with the Principal, Principal Girl.
Helen Nanna, a good, kind girl and high up in the class at Old Dame Nature’s Select Academy for Young Ladies, handed the programme to Uncle Philip, who perused the same as soon as the vibrations under the chocolate waistcoat would allow him to do so.
“Birdie Brightwing—no, she’s Prince Charming, and this is Cinderella. Mary Caspar is Cinderella.”