“Ada wants me to sit up till she comes home,” began Gretel, but on receiving a warning glance from Miss Marsh, she grew suddenly pink and did not finish her sentence.
“Good night, Miss Margareta,” said Mr. Pendleton, pleasantly, as he followed the others into the elevator. “Your time will come, too, some day, and we shall have you going to the opera before we know it.”
Then the elevator door closed, and Gretel was left standing alone in the hall. But unlike the Cinderella of fairy-tale fame, she did not sit down among the ashes to cry. On the contrary, she smiled quite brightly, as she closed the door of the Marshes’ apartment, and hurried away to the parlor, the windows of which looked down on Broadway, and over at the great opera house just across the street.
Gretel was still smiling when she pushed aside the window-curtains, and flattened her face against the pane. To watch the people going into fairy-land was one of her favorite amusements.
“I wonder whether I really ever shall go,” she said to herself a little wistfully. “I don’t quite see how I can, for of course nobody will ever take me, and it costs so much money to buy a ticket, even for the standing-up place. But, oh, if I should—it would be something to be happy about forever!”
It was very interesting to watch the long line of carriages and motor-cars depositing their occupants at the doors of fairy-land. Gretel watched them eagerly, but for the first time a little doubt had crept into her mind.
“I used to think they must all be so happy,” she said, reflectively, “but Ada didn’t seem to care much, and I don’t believe Mrs. Marsh did, either, though she pretended to. Father said a person must have a soul to love music, and I don’t believe Mrs. Marsh or Ada have souls—or at least not the kind he meant.”
Just then some one came into the room and turned up the light. It was Dora, the maid-of-all-work. For the first moment she did not see Gretel, who was hidden by the curtains of the window, and going over to the center table, she lifted the lid of a candy box, and was just about to help herself to a caramel when she caught sight of the little girl, and flew back hastily, with a muttered ejaculation of annoyance. But Gretel was too much absorbed to notice what the maid was doing.
“Come and watch them go in, Dora,” she said, eagerly. “There are more carriages and automobiles than ever to-night, I think. That’s because it’s ‘Lohengrin.’ Father loved ‘Lohengrin’ best of all the operas; he used to play it for me. I know the ‘Swan Song,’ and ‘Elsa’s Dream’ and the wedding march. I can play little bits of them myself. Did you ever go to fairy-land, Dora?”
“Fairy-land!” Dora repeated, laughing. “What a funny question! Of course I didn’t. There isn’t any such place really; it’s just in stories.”