Page:The principal girl (IA principalgirl00snai).pdf/46

 *ing of the something. Now what do you suppose it was? Nothing less than the arrival of the Principal Girl.

She just wandered in, no-how as it were, with a broom in her hand and her skirt in tatters, and a red cap over her curls and her feet in slippers. She was merely the maid of all work in the kitchen of the Baron de No-Cash, a downtrodden creature according to legend and according to the libretto, but you would hardly have thought so, since she had to stand bowing for two whole minutes over her broom handle before she was allowed to proceed with the business of life.

The roar reverberated from the roof of the gallery to the floor of the pit. Kids in boxes, kids in stalls, kids in the dress circle, and an infant in arms at the back of the pit all did their best; and responsible middle-aged gentlemen from the Kaffir Circus and the Rubber Market, a grandee from the Home Department, a judge of the Court of King's Bench, a solicitor who had applied the money of his clients to his own purposes, although nobody had found him out at present, a substantial family from Hammersmith, the proprietor of a flourishing Brixton laundry, whose eldest girl was in the ballet, an old charwoman in the front row of the gods, and a thousand and one other heterogeneous elements whom we are only able to refer to in the most general terms, assisted Marge and Timothy and Alice