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The girls in the wings were rapturous in their enthusiasm, and were calling her absurdly extravagant titles of endearment, and making so much noise that Kripps stopped grinning at her from the entrance, and looked back over his shoulder as he looked when he threatened fines and calls for early rehearsal. And when she had finished finally, and the prima donna and the children ran off together, there was a roar from the house that went to Lester’s head like wine, and seemed to leap clear across the footlights and drag the children back again.

“That settles it!” cried Lester, in a suppressed roar of triumph. “I knew that child would catch them.”

There were four encores, and then the children and Elise Broughten, the pretty prima donna, came off jubilant and happy, with the Littlest Girl’s arms full of flowers, which the management had with kindly forethought prepared for the prima donna, but which that delightful young person and the delighted leader of the orchestra had passed over to the little girl.

“Well,” gasped Miss Broughten, as she came up to Van Bibber laughing, and with one hand on her side and breathing very quickly, “will you kindly tell me who is the leading woman now? Am I the prima donna, or am I not? I wasn’t in it, was I?”

“You were not,” said Van Bibber.

He turned from the pretty prima donna and hunted up the wardrobe woman, and told her he wanted to meet the Littlest Girl. And the wardrobe woman, who was fluttering wildly about, and as delighted as though they were all her own children, told him to come into the property-room, where the children were, and which had been changed into a dressing-room that they might be by themselves. The six little girls were in six different states of dishabille, but they were too little to mind that, and Van Bibber was too polite to observe it.

“This is the little girl, sir,” said the wardrobe woman, excitedly, proud at being the means of bringing together two such prominent people. “Her name is Madeline. Speak to the gentleman, Madeline; he wants to tell you what a great big hit youse made.”

The little girl was seated on one of the cushions of a double throne so high from the ground that the young woman who was pulling off the child’s silk stockings and putting woollen ones on in their place did so without stooping. The young woman looked at Van Bibber and nodded somewhat doubtfully and ungraciously, and Van Bibber turned to the little girl in preference. The young woman’s face was one of a type that was too familiar to be pleasant.

He took the Littlest Girl’s small hand in his and shook it solemnly, and said, “I am very glad to know you. Can I sit up here beside you, or do you rule alone?”

“Yes, ma’am–yes, sir,” answered the little girl.

Van Bibber put his hands on the arms of the throne and vaulted up beside the girl, and pulled out the flower in his button-hole and gave it to her.

“Now,” prompted the wardrobe woman, “what do you say to the gentleman?”

“Thank you, sir,” stammered the little girl.

“She is not much used to gentlemen’s society,” explained the woman who was pulling on the stockings.

“I see,” said Van Bibber. He did not know exactly what to say next. And yet he wanted to talk to the child very much, so much more than he generally wanted to talk to most young women, who showed no hesitation in talking to him. With them he had no difficulty whatsoever. There was a doll lying on the top of a chest near them, and he picked this up and surveyed it critically. “Is this your doll?” he asked.

“No,” said Madeline, pointing to one of the children, who was much taller than herself; “it’s ‘at ‘ittle durl’s. My doll he’s dead.”