apparently as unconcerned to all about her, excepting the pretty prima
donna, as though she were by a piano at home practising a singing
lesson. She seemed to think it was some new sort of a game. When the
prima donna raised her arms, the child raised hers; when the prima
donna courtesied, she stumbled into one, and straightened herself just
in time to get the curls out of her eyes, and to see that the prima
donna was laughing at her, and to smile cheerfully back, as if to say,
"_We_ are doing our best anyway, aren't we?" She had big, gentle eyes
and two wonderful dimples, and in the excitement of the dancing and
the singing her eyes laughed and flashed, and the dimples deepened and
disappeared and reappeared again. She was as happy and innocent
looking as though it were nine in the morning and she were playing
school at a kindergarten. From all over the house the women were
murmuring their delight, and the men were laughing and pulling their
mustaches and nudging each other to "look at the littlest one."

The girls in the wings were rapturous in their enthusiasm, and were
calling her absurdly extravagant titles of endearment, and making so
much noise that Kripps stopped grinning at her from the entrance, and
looked back over his shoulder as he looked when he threatened fines
and calls for early rehearsal. And when she had finished finally, and
the prima donna and the children ran off together, there was a roar
from the house that went to Lester's head like wine, and seemed to
leap clear across the footlights and drag the children back again.

"That settles it!" cried Lester, in a suppressed roar of triumph. "I
knew that child would catch them."

There were four encores, and then the children and Elise Broughten,
the pretty prima donna, came off jubilant and happy, with the Littlest