An hour later, as Petite Jeanne twisted her pink toes beneath her silk-covered eiderdown, brought all the way from her beloved France, she whispered low:
“To-morrow!”
And after a time, once again, faint, indistinct like a word from a dream:
“To-morrow.”
CHAPTER III
ON THE VERGE OF ADVENTURE
Long after Petite Jeanne’s dainty satin slippers had danced her off to bed, Florence Huyler sat before the fire thinking. If your acquaintance with Florence is of long standing, you will know that she was possessed of both courage and strength. For some time a gymnasium director, she had developed her splendid physical being to the last degree. Even now, though her principal business in life had for some time been that of keeping up with the little French girl, she spent three hours each day in the gymnasium and swimming pool. Her courage surpassed her strength; yet as she contemplated the step Petite Jeanne had taken and the events which must immediately follow that move, she trembled.
“It’s all too absurd, anyway,” she told herself. “She wants to be an opera singer, so she dresses herself up like a boy and becomes an usher. What good could possibly come of that?”
All the time she was thinking this she realized that her objections were futile. Petite Jeanne believed in Fate. Fate would take her where she wished to go.
“If she wished to marry the President’s son, she’d become a maid in the White House. And then—” Florence paused. She dared not say that Petite Jeanne would not attain her end. Up to this moment Jeanne had surmounted all obstacles. Adopted by the gypsies, she had lived in their camps for years. She had inherited their fantastic attitude toward life. For her nothing was entirely real, and nothing unattainable.
“But to-morrow night!” Florence shuddered. The little French girl meant to don her dress suit and as Pierre Andrews return to her post as usher in the boxes of that most magnificent of all opera houses.