would give her the reason for rejecting his friendly advances. She got
ready the next evening to go to the theatre with the rest. Mr. Thomas at
once possessed himself of Kitty and walked on ahead, leaving Joe to
accompany his mother and Mrs. Jones,--an arrangement, by the way, not
altogether to that young gentleman's taste. A good many men bowed to
Thomas in the street, and they turned to look enviously after him. At
the door of the theatre they had to run the gantlet of a dozen pairs of
eyes. Here, too, the party's guide seemed to be well known, for some one
said, before they passed out of hearing, "I wonder who that little light
girl is that Thomas is with to-night? He 's a hot one for you."

Mrs. Hamilton had been in a theatre but once before in her life, and Joe
and Kit but a few times oftener. On those occasions they had sat far up
in the peanut gallery in the place reserved for people of colour. This
was not a pleasant, cleanly, nor beautiful locality, and by contrast
with it, even the garishness of the cheap New York theatre seemed fine
and glorious.

They had good seats in the first balcony, and here their guide had shown
his managerial ability again, for he had found it impossible, or said
so, to get all the seats together, so that he and the girl were in the
row in front and to one side of where the rest sat. Kitty did not like
the arrangement, and innocently suggested that her brother take her seat
while she went back to her mother. But her escort overruled her
objections easily, and laughed at her so frankly that from very shame
she could not urge them again, and they were soon forgotten in her
wonder at the mystery and glamour that envelops the home of the drama.
There was something weird to her in the alternate spaces of light and
shade. Without any feeling of its ugliness, she looked at the curtain as
at a door that should presently open between her and a house of wonders.