“Lost your ticket?” repeated her husband; “how did it happen—where did you put it?”
“In my purse, I thought, but it must have dropped out, for I found the clasp unfastened. I really don’t think I ever had quite such a shock in my life. I rushed back to the opera house, hoping the ticket might have been picked up and returned to the box office, but of course it was of no use. It was a very windy day, and the envelope may have been blown away, nobody knows where. There was nothing to be done but go home and bear the disappointment as well as I could.”
“Poor little girl,” said Mr. Douane, tenderly, “I can imagine what it meant to you. I should like to find the fellow who picked up that ticket, and give him a piece of my mind. Any one should have known that the proper thing to do was to return it to the box office. Did you go back again? It might have been returned later, you know.”
“Oh, yes, I tried twice more before giving up all hope. Unfortunately, I did not remember the number of my seat, and the man at the box office assured me there was no hope. Whoever found the ticket must have used it, but perhaps it was never picked up at all. I think I was about as unhappy that night as any girl could be, but you know the old saying, ‘The darkest hour is always just before dawn.’ It was the very next day that Mrs. Barlow’s letter came, asking me to go to Old Point, and it was only a week later that you and I met; so I ought not to complain, ought I?”
“Well, perhaps not, but I still maintain that I should like to find the person who picked up that ticket. It was a confoundedly dishonest trick not to have handed it in at the box office.”
Mr. Douane said a good deal more, but that was all Gretel heard. As silently as it had come, the little figure on the stairs rose and slipped away. The child’s face was very white, and her eyes were big and frightened. When she reached her own room, she closed the door softly, and sank down in a little heap on the bed. She was trembling all over.
“It was Barbara’s ticket to fairy-land, and I stole it,” she whispered. “Percy said it was a confoundedly dishonest thing to do. Barbara loves ‘Lohengrin’ as much as I do, and she was poor, too. I knew I had been wicked, but I never knew I’d really been dishonest. I love Barbara better than any one in the world, and I stole her ticket to fairy-land!”
Poor little repentant Cinderella! Her happy day was over; the clock had struck twelve.
CHAPTER XIV
AFTER THE CLOCK STRUCK TWELVE
IT was still very early the next morning when Gretel awoke; a robin was singing on a tree just outside her window, but everything else was still. For the first few bewildered moments she could not remember where she was, or what had happened, and lay wondering idly why her head ached, and her eyes felt so stiff and swollen. Then it all came back with a rush; the music, Barbara’s story, and those dreadful words of her brother’s. Afterwards the long hours she had lain awake, alone in the darkness, trying to make up her mind what she ought to do. She had cried herself to sleep at last, having finally decided upon the course of action, which it seemed to the poor foolish little girl, was the right one to take.