as though it were any too healthy down to the place you’re visiting at, Dan. Plumbing all right?” And the boy, flushing slightly, had said: “Don’t you fret, Josh, I’ll look after my health all right.” “There’s nothing like the mountain air,” returned the Westerner. “These old fogs stick in my nostrils; feel as though I could smell London clean down to my feet!” From the corner of the box Dan looked hard 35 at the stage, at the fresh brilliant costumes and the lovely chorus girls. 35 “Gosh,” he thought to himself, “they are the prettiest ever! Dove-gray, eyes of Irish blue, mouths like roses!” Leaning forward a little toward the duchess he whispered: “There isn’t one who isn’t a winner. I never struck such a box of dry goods!” The duchess smiled on Dan with good humor. His naïve pleasure was delightful. It was like taking a child to a pantomime. She was wearing his flowers and displaying a jewel that he had found and bought for her, and which she had not hesitated to accept. She watched his eager face and his pleasure unaffected and keen. She could not believe that this young man was master of ten million pounds. When Letty Lane appeared Blair heard a light rustle like rain through the auditorium, a murmur, and the house rose. There was a well-bred calling from the stalls, a call from the pit, and a generous applause—“Letty 36 Lane—Letty Lane!” and as though she were royalty, there was a fluttering of handkerchiefs like flags. The young fellow with the others stood in the back of the box, his hands in his pockets, looking at the stage. There wasn’t a girl in the chorus as pretty as this prima donna! Letty Lane came on in Mandalay in the first act in the dress of a fashionable princess. She was modish and worldly. For the only time in the play she was modern and conventional, and whatever breeding she might have been able to claim, from whatever class she was born, as she stood there in her beautiful gown she was grace itself, and charm. She was distinctly a star, and showed her appreciation of her audience’s admiration. 36 At the end of the tenor solo the Princess Oltary runs into the pavilion and there changes her dress and appears once more to dance before the rajah and to prove herself the dancer he has known and loved in a café in Paris. Letty Lane’s dress in this dance was the classic ballet
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