Goodness gracious! that girl-boy had taken up my thoughts, so that I didn't know when the Grand Duke came into his pulpit loge. But there he was, standing up, and looking right toward me, so pleasant.

I threw back my fur mantle a trifle, and taking Cousin E. E.'s fan, waved it gracefully, hoping thus to cool off the blushes that bathed my cheeks with a rosiness that I feared might not harmonize with the tints already there.

Still he looked my way earnestly, and with the fire of admiration in his blue eyes. A young thing sitting in the loge-pew behind me began to turn away her head and hide behind her fan, as if she had anything to do with it. The conceit of some people is astonishing!

Cousin E. E.'s little spy-gla.s.s lay in her lap. I took it up; I held it to my eyes, and devoured him with one burning glance. His heart seemed leaping to mine through the gla.s.s. I knew it. I felt it. Indeed he won't be the first of his n.o.ble race that has lost heart and soul to a country girl.

The Prince sat down, and when there was a lull in the music, clapped his hands with joy. Oh, my sisters! it is something to have given such supreme pleasure to the Grand Ducal soul.

He looked at the play; I looked too. Souls in sympathy have but one thought. I pitied that poor girl-boy with all my heart--my own happiness made me compa.s.sionate. How she suffered when that woman with the yellow skirts and the young fellow in boots were singing love to each other!

Once she got wild, and dressed herself in a pink silk, and--well, she made one of those toilets that Cousin E. E. understands so well. I was sorry to see her exposing one or two little things that should be a secret with the s.e.x. But she did, and the yellow lady caught her at it, and sung awfully provoking things at her.

Well, she just tore off the dress, scattered the lace tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs about, put on her old duds, and ran away.

Then the house got on fire: the whole swarm of people come out helter-skelter, singing to the flames that didn't mind the music more than if it had been buckets full of water. Firemen came running with ladders that n.o.body climbed, and pails of water, that the firemen carried round and round, in and out, like crazy creatures. I am sure I saw one fellow, with a white pail, pitch through the same window into the red-hot flames fifty times. The poor girl-boy, being desperate, just pitched in, determined to burn herself, while the woman in yellow and the man in boots looked on.

This went right to the cruel man's heart; he jumped in after her, carried her away from the devouring flames, and fell in love with her like a man. Of course, being a decent kind of a fellow, he couldn't keep on singing out his love to both girls at once with enthusiasm, and began to neglect the yellow girl in a way that brought tears into her voice whenever she came pleading to him under the window--which she did, not having the pride of all the Frost family in her veins.

Of course this did no good; men never come back to women that whine. The girl--for she had given up boys' clothes--had got him safe; he didn't care a chestnut-burr for all the other's singing, but took to the little vagabondess with all his heart and soul.

Now something else happened. The old man in gray got his mind again and turned out to be Mignon's father (have I told you that was her name?).

He was a rich old fellow, with a house furnished with gilt chairs, and everything sumptuous--so, of course, the fellow in boots stuck to her more than ever.

I don't know what became of the woman in yellow, but as for this other girl, she came out first best in every respect; especially at the end, when ever so many flowers and baskets and things were just poured down upon her. For my part, I thought the yellow girl ought to have had full half of these things, for I liked her quite as well, if not better than the vagabondess.

Well, the green curtain went down for good, and the whole congregation got up to go out.

"How do you like Nilsson?" says Cousin E. E., as she was fastening her fur mantle.

"Nilsson!" says I, "I haven't seen her yet."

"Why, yes you have--she just came out."

"What!--that girl-boy?"

"Yes, Mignon."

"You don't say so," says I. "Who then was the girl in yellow?"

"Oh! she is Duval."

"Well, I like her at any rate, poor thing; it was a shame to treat her so."

That moment I felt that the great Grand Duke was gone. Not one more glance. It was hard!

XXV.

THE BLACK CROOK.

Sisters:--Since my intimacy with Imperial Royalty, Cousin Emily Elizabeth Dempster has been as proud as a peac.o.c.k of our relationship, and speaks about the Court of all the Russias as if she expected to have an ice-palace built on the Neva for her, every winter, for the rest of her life. This may be natural--I dare say it is; but I'm afraid that Russia--being an awful despotism--wouldn't stand too many of one's relations crowding into the Imperial corn-crib, that being a free-born inst.i.tution peculiar to high moral ideas which my great Grand Duke did not stay in Boston long enough to imbibe.

Still, being a relation and born under the star-spangled banner, why shouldn't she have her own little hopes? I ask myself this and resolve to do my best for her. Being a first cousin she has her rights.

This morning E. E. sent down a little straw-colored letter with a picture on the envelop just where it seals, and asked me to go with her and Dempster to see "The Black Crook," which she wrote was a spectacle worth looking at. They had got seats at Niblo's to see it after ever so much trouble, and were sure that I would be delighted.

Delighted! What about! I never hankered much for eye-gla.s.s or spectacles. I wish cousin E. E. would be a little more particular about her spelling--that sometimes makes goose-pimples creep all over me--but a spectacle, singular, spelt with an "a," gives one just a tantalizing sense of growing old, more provoking than saying the thing right out. I can't see any more sense in one spectacle than in half a pair of scissors, but maybe she can. At any rate I don't mean to go gadding down to Mr. Niblo's theatre just to see that.

But the "Black Crook," I'm beat to know what that has to do with spectacles or eye-gla.s.ses. I have read what our minister calls pastoral poetry, and almost always find it divided off into hill-side lots, where some stuck-up young creature in the farming line, is tending sheep, with a long crook-necked stick in her hand, with which she

Just trains the little bleating lambs, "With fleece as white as snow,"

And points out with her crooked stick Just where they ought to go.

Excuse poetry, but, like a pent-up spring, it will break forth; nor must you suspect me of plagiarism. Remark--the second line has honest quotation-marks, which is doing full justice to Mary who owned the particular lamb which has become immortal from its whiteness and exceptional training.

But all this does not bring us any nearer to what this Black Crook means. I have been studying this matter over. Of course a crook is a crook. Put the neck of a winter squash on the end of a bean pole, and you have it.

But the Black Crook. Black? Ah, why didn't I think of that before? From the name, I suppose it is some reconstruction instrument for hooking-up taxes and bonds, left behind here in New York by some run-away Southern governor.

Well, now, I _should_ like to see that--anything left behind by one of those fellows must be a curiosity.

Yes, I made up my mind to accept Cousin E. E. D.'s invitation. The theatre would be something new anyhow, and it is the duty of my mission to see all things and hold fast to that which is good.

Well, just before dark, I got out that pink silk dress and the two long braids, and shut myself in with the looking-gla.s.s over my bureau, which is always reflecting, but says nothing, or one might be afraid to trust it on some occasions.

I was almost ready, when Cousin Emily E. come in so suddenly that I hopped up from my chair, and gave a scary scream. The face in the gla.s.s turned all sorts of colors, and seemed to scream too, and looked half-frightened to death. Cousin E. E. laughed, and shut the door.

Holding up both hands, says she:

"What, in that dress! My dear cousin, it is to a theatre we are going."

"Well, I reckon your letter told me that," says I, a-spreading out the skirt of my dress along the floor.

"But we do not dress like that for a theatre," says she, a-looking down at her black silk dress, which was all fluttered over with narrow ruffles. "No trains, dear Cousin Frost, no lace--a plain walking-dress and bonnet--nothing more?"

I looked at the shiny waves of pink silk lying around my feet, and at that face in the gla.s.s, and was just ready to burst out a-crying. It was too bad.

"You thought this just the thing when we went to hear that Miss Nilsson sing," says I, looking mournfully at that face in the gla.s.s, which was almost crying.

"Yes; but that was the opera--this only a theatre. You see the difference," says she.

"No, I don't," says I.

"Well, you will," says she. "It's the fashion. You, who write about fashionable life so beautifully, ought to know that."

"Just as if I didn't," says I; and the fire flashed into my eyes while I took off my pink dress; and put on my alpaca, which has got a new overskirt trimmed with flutings.