e
me."

But, while the question was still on his lips, the shadow passed, and
Jenny laughed.

The famous evening was finally assigned to the twenty-seventh of
January. The four girls took their places in the ballet as usual and,
meeting from time to time in evolutions, would murmur as they danced by,
"To-night, what, what?" or "Don't you wish it was eleven?" They would
look at each other, too, from opposite sides of the stage, smiling in
the sympathy of anticipated pleasure. When the curtains fell they
hurried to their dressing-rooms to exchange tights and spangles for
mid-Victorian frocks, whose dainty lace made all the other girls very
envious indeed. Some were so envious as to suggest to Jenny that another
color would have suited her better than pink or that her hair would be
more becoming _en chignon_ than curled. But Jenny was not deceived by
such professions of amiable advice.

"Yes, some of you would like to see me with my hair done different. Some
of you wouldn't be half pleased if I went out looking a sight. Oh, no,
it's only a rumor. Thanks, I'm not taking any. I know what suits me
better than _any_one, _which_ pink does."

"Don't take any notice of them," Maudie whispered to her friend.

"Take notice of them. What! Why, I should be all the time looking. My
eyes would get as big as moons. They've been opened wide enough since I
came to the Orient, as it is."

At last, having survived every criticism, the four girls were ready. The
hall-porter's boy carried their luggage out to the salmon-colored taxis,
whose drivers looked embarrassed by the salmon-colored carnations which
Maurice insisted they should wear. The latter, with Fuz, Ronnie and
Cunningham, stood in the entrance of the court, wrapped in full cloaks
and wearing tall hats of a bygone fashion. They were leaning gracefully
on their tasseled canes as the girls came along the court towards them.
It was romantic to think that other girls in similar frocks had trod the
same path and met men dressed like them fifty years ago. This sweet
fancy was very vividly brought home to them when an old cleaner, grimed
with half a century of Orient dust, passed by the laughing, chattering
group, and, as she shuffled off towards Seven Dials, looked back over
her shoulder with an expression of fear.

"Marie thinks we're ghosts," laughed Madge.

"Isn't it dreadful to think she was once in the ballet?" said Jenny.
"Poor old crow, I do think it's dreadful."

The