Very good! All right!"
"You shall go to the theatre if you want to," he remarked at last,
in that sweet, protecting way peculiar to his class from the habitual
confounding of _can, shall_ and _will_, and that put us into good
humor directly. To go to the theatre would be just the thing.
"Oh yes, everybody goes," he said. It was a Danish company--very good
actors--very pretty piece; but we rather expected to care more for the
_everybody_ than either the piece or the actors; and so it proved.
We went early, and established ourselves in the orchestra-stalls, as
already stated, while our guardian accepted an unpretending seat
for himself, where he remained in readiness to tow us home after the
performance. And then the spectators began to come in, and positively
some of the very people who used to be at the panorama. I know there
was a lady in front of me, in Mechanic Hall, who wore her hair in
just such a little knot--_pug_ is, I think, the classic name for that
coiffure--and her dress cut as low in the throat and adorned with
precisely such a self-embroidered collar as the lady rejoiced in who
occupied the seat before me at the theatre. That she was one of the
fashionables of Carlstad could be seen in the lofty pose of that pug,
and in the curious structure of ribbon and lace that sat astride of
it and hung down at each side. Her husband, a small, rather dried-up
gentleman, had the look of a town oracle who was oppressed at home,
and her daughter was one of the prettiest girls in the house.
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