There had been "Wang" and "The
Wizard of Oz"; "Robin Hood"; the tall comedian of "Casey at the Bat";
the short comedian who had danced to fame on his crooked legs; Mrs.
Fiske, most incomparable Becky; Mansfield, Sothern--some of them, alas,
already gods of yesterday!
At first there had been matinees with her mother--"The Little
Princess," over whose sorrows she had wept in the harrowing first act,
having to be consoled with chocolates and the promise of brighter
things as the play progressed.
Now and then she had come with Hilda. But never when she could help
it. "I'd rather stay at home," she had told her father.
"But--why--?"
"Because she laughs in the wrong places."
Her father never laughed in the wrong places, and he squeezed her hand
in those breathless moments where words would have been desecration,
and wiped his eyes frankly when his feelings were stirred.
"There is no one like you, Daddy," she had told him, "to enjoy things."
And so it had come about that he had pushed away his work on certain
nights and, sitting beside her, had forgotten the sordid and suffering
world which he knew so well, and which she knew not at all.
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