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256 256 THE PRINCIPAL BOY.

dress-suit. It was the first time he had seen Prince Pretty- pet since the merry tea-party, and he did not know why he was seeing her now. He hoped she did not see him. She pirouetted up to the front of his box pretty often during the evening, and several times hurled ancient wheezes at the riotous funnymen from that coign of vantage. Spoken so near his ear, the vulgar jokes tingled through him like lashes from a whip. Once she sang a chorus, winking in his direction. But that was the business of the song, and im- personal. He saw no sure signs of recognition, and was glad.

When, during the gradual but gorgeous evolution of the Transformation Scene, he received a note from her, he remained glad. It ran, " The bearer will take you behind. I have no one to see me home. Always your friend — Lucy." He went " behind," following his guide through a confusion of coatless carpenters waving torches of blue and green fire from the wings, and gauzy, highly coloured White- chapel girls ensconcing themselves in uncomfortable atti- tudes on wooden pedestals, which were mounting and descending.

Georgie Spanner was bustling about, half crazed, amid a hubbub perfectly inaudible from the front ; but he found time to scowl at Frank, as that gentleman stumbled over the pantaloon and fell against a little iron lever, whose turning might have plunged the stage in darkness. Frank found Lucy in a tiny cellar with whitewashed walls and a rough counter, on which stood a tin basin and a litter of " make up" materials. She had " changed " before he came. It was the first time for years he had seen her in her true womanly envelope. Assuredly she had grown far lovelier, and her face was flushed with triumph ; otherwise it was the old Lucy. The Prince was washed off with the paint.