She knew now where she had seen the old gentleman with the wide shirt front. He was the shabby old gentleman of the Toy Shop! And the youth was the shabby son!
Yet here they were in state and elegance! As if a fairy godmother had waved a wand—!
The curtain went up on a feverish little slavey with her mind set on going to the ball, on Our Policeman wanting a shave, on the orphans in boxes, on baked potato offered as hospitality by a half-starved hostess, on a waiting Cinderella asleep on a frozen doorstep.
And then the ball—and Mona Lisa, and the Duchess of Devonshire, and The Girl with the Pitcher and the Girl with the Muff—and Cinderella in azure tulle and cloth-of-gold, dancing with the Prince at the end like mad—.
Then the bell boomed—the lights went out—and after a little moment, one saw Cinderella, stripped of her finery, staggering up the stairs.
Jean cried and laughed, and cried again. Yet even in the midst of her emotion, she found her eyes pulled away from that appealing figure on the stage to those faintly illumined figures in the box.
When the curtain went down, her father, most surprisingly, bowed to the old gentleman and received in return a genial nod.
"Oh, do you know him?" she demanded.
"Yes. It is General Drake."
"Who are the others?"