Then this oasis of a man, this “typical Britisher,” went away, and my sister and I dressed for the theatre.  A friend had sent us her box, and assured us that it was perfectly proper for us to go alone.  So we went.  Up to this time we had not hinted to each other that we were homesick.  The play was most amusing, yet we couldn’t help watching the audience.  Such a bored-looking set, the women with frizzled hair held down by invisible nets, mingling with their eyebrows, and done hideously in the back.  Low-necked gowns, exhibiting the most beautiful shoulders in the world.  Gorgeous jewels in their hair and gleaming all over their bodices, but among half a dozen emerald, turquoise, and diamond bracelets there would appear a silver-watch bracelet which cost not over ten dollars, and spoiled the effect of all the others.

English women as a race are the worst-dressed women in the world.  I saw thousands of them in Piccadilly and Regent Street, and at Church Parade in the Park, with high, French-heeled slippers over colored stockings.  And as to sizes, I should say nines were the average.  There are some smaller, but the most are larger.

The Prince of Wales was in the box opposite to ours, and when we were not looking at him we gazed at the impassive faces of the audience.  They never smiled.  They never laughed.  The subtlest points in the play went unnoticed, yet it is one which has had a record run and bids fair to keep the boards for the rest of the season.

Suddenly my sister, although we had not spoken of the homesickness that was weighing us down, touched my arm and said, “Look quick!  There’s one!”

“Where?  Where?”

“Down there just in front of the pit, talking to that bald-headed idiot with the monocle.”

“Do you think she is American?” I said, dubiously.  I couldn’t see her feet.  “She might be French.  She talks all over.”

“No.  She is an American girl.  See how thin she is.  The French are short and fat.”

“Look at her face,” I said, enviously.  “How animated it is.  See how it seems to stand out among all the other faces.”

“Yet she is only amusing herself.  See how stolid that creature looks that she is wasting all her vitality on.”

“She has told him some joke and she is laughing at it.  He has put his monocle in his other eye in his effort to see the point.  He will get it by the next boat.  Wish she’d come and tell that joke to me.  I’d laugh at it.”

My sister eyed me critically.

“You don’t look as if you could laugh,” she said.

“I wonder what would happen if I should fall dead and drop over into the lap of that fat elephant in pink silk with the red neck,” I said, musingly.

“She wouldn’t even wink,” said my sister, laughingly.  “But if you struck her just right you would bounce clear up here again and I could catch you.”

“It is just four o’clock in Chicago,” I said.