"Don't let him prejudice you against me, Mr. Gilman!" she murmured. "We shall soon be better acquainted, I am sure. Do you know, I am to be your mother in the play? It is a little absurd, as I am only twenty-three, but we have to do strange things on the stage."
"She's thirty-six if she's a day," whispered Osprey, "but if you want to keep in her good graces you must believe her own reports of her age."
"Time to dress, Jed!" said Harry Bertram. "It will take you longer than usual, as it is the first time. Your nerve won't fail you, will it?"
Jed shook his head.
"I feel as cool as ever I did," he answered.
Fortunately the telegraph boy's uniform fitted him exactly. He hardly knew himself as he looked at his reflection in the little mirror in his dressing-room.
"I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Fogson would recognize me if they should see me on the stage?" thought Jed.
Then it occurred to him that Percy Dixon and his mother would be present. He smiled to himself as he thought of Percy's bewilderment when he saw him under such a strange change of circumstances.
It is not necessary to give the plot of the Gold King. It is sufficient to say that Jed, the telegraph boy, had been stolen from his parents in early life, the Gold King being his father. He is obliged to earn his own living as a boy, but in the last act he is restored to his friends and his old station in life.