It was after the third act—in which there was a picture of cruel winter, with all the characters in the play combating a common foe in the form of the withering cold—that the Sprite won the heartiest approval.
Thunders of applause swept over the house; and when the effect of thunder had passed there was a steady demonstration resembling the heavy fall of rain. Again and again Bonnie May bowed as the curtain was lifted and lowered, and again and again the applause took on new vigor and earnestness. And then she stepped a little forward and nodded lightly toward some one back in the wings, and the curtain remained up.
She made a little speech. It seemed she had a special voice for that, too. It was lower, but elaborately distinct. The very unconventionality of it afforded a different kind of delight. Her manner was one of mild disparagement of an inartistic custom. She bowed herself from the stage with infinite graciousness.
She was a tremendous success.
It was only after the curtain went down for the last time that Thornburg appeared at the Baron box. The scene had been called “Spring—and the Fairies,” and it had put the pleasantest of thoughts into the minds of the audience, which was now noisily dispersing.
“I hope you’re all coming back on the stage for a minute,” said the manager.
He was dismayed by Mrs. Baron’s impetuosity. She was too eager to remain an instant talking to any one. She could scarcely wait to be escorted back to the stage—and yet she had no idea how to reach that unknown territory undirected. Her bearing was really quite pathetic.
And in a moment the entire party had passed through a doorway quite close to the box, and were casting about in that region where the wings touch the dressing-rooms. The players were hurrying to and fro, and one man, carrying a large waxen nose and a pair of enormous ears—he had been a gnome in the play—paused and looked curiously at the very circumspect intruders.
Somehow it did not seem at all remarkable to Baron, as it might have done, that he presently found himself confronting Miss Barry. It was plain that she had been waiting to enter the child’s dressing-room, and at the approach of Thornburg she brightened—rather by intention, perhaps, than spontaneously.
“Oh, how fortunate!” she began. “You’ll be able to help me, of course. I want to see the new star! I’d lost track of her.” Her practised smile and shifting eyes played upon Thornburg menacingly, inquiringly, appealingly. “I want to begin planning for her again. When her engagement here is over I mean to take her with me to the coast. She’s reached an age now when I can be of real help to her. Isn’t it wonderful—the way she has developed?”