At last we were all satisfied, and we talked over the matter of the theatre. We must be standing outside not a minute later than seven o’clock. Von Marlo would keep at my right, and Alex at my left, and Charley would be my bodyguard behind. When the rush came we would surely be in the front rank, and we would get good seats. The scenes of the play would be most harrowing; there was a secret murder in it, and a duel, and one or two other extreme horrors. The boys said it was of the sensational order, and Alex wound up with the remark that we could not possibly stand anything else to-night.
Then there fell a silence upon us. We need not go to the Adelphi yet; it was not very far from where we lived. We could get there in a few minutes. There was more than an hour between us and the desirable moment when we were to steal like thieves in the night from our father’s respectable house to go to that place of iniquity, the pit at the Adelphi. For, of course, it was very naughty of us to go. Our father himself would not have thought it right to allow children to partake of these worldly pleasures.
In the silence that ensued the pain at my heart began again. It was then Von Marlo made his remark.
“I think,” he said, “it would be exceedingly interesting if Miss Rachel would tell us exactly what the new mamma is like.”
Nothing could be more intensely aggravating than those words, “the new mamma,” had they fallen from any lips but Von Marlo’s. But the peculiar foreign intonation he gave the words caused us three to burst out laughing.
“You must never say those words again—never as long as you live, Von Marlo,” cried Alex, while Charley sprang upon him and did his very best to knock him off his chair.
“Come, come! no violence,” I said. “Please understand, Mr Von Marlo, that the lady who has married our father is not our new mamma.”
“I am sorry, I am sure,” said Von Marlo. “I won’t call her that any more—never; I am certain of that. But, all the same, if she is coming to live here, what is she like? You have seen her, Miss Rachel; you can describe her.”
“Yes, you may as well tell us about her,” said Charley. “I suppose she is precious ugly. Catch father choosing a woman with good looks! Why, he doesn’t know blue eyes from brown, or a straight nose from a crooked one, or a large mouth from a small one. He never looks at any woman; I can’t imagine how he got hold of her.”
“Hannah said,” remarked Alex, “that she got hold of him.”