"What private box?"
"The ghost's box!"
"Has the ghost a box? Oh, do tell us, do tell us!"
"Not so loud!" said Meg. "It's Box Five, you know, the box on the
grand tier, next to the stage-box, on the left."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"I tell you it is. Mother has charge of it. But you swear you won't
say a word?"
"Of course, of course."
"Well, that's the ghost's box. No one has had it for over a month,
except the ghost, and orders have been given at the box-office that it
must never be sold."
"And does the ghost really come there?"
"Yes."
"Then somebody does come?"
"Why, no! The ghost comes, but there is nobody there."
The little ballet-girls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the
box, he must be seen, because he wore a dress-coat and a death's head.
This was what they tried to make Meg understand, but she replied: "That's just it! The ghost is not seen. And he has no dress-coat and
no head! All that talk about his death's head and his head of fire is
nonsense! There's nothing in it. You only hear him when he is in the
box. Mother has never seen him, but she has heard him. Mother knows,
because she gives him his program."
Sorelli interfered.
"Giry, child, you're getting at us!"
Thereupon little Giry began to cry.
"I ought to have held my tongue--if mother ever came to know! But I
was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no business to talk of things that
don't concern him--it will bring him bad luck--mother was saying so
last night----"
There was a sound of hurried and heavy footsteps in the passage and a
breathless voice cried: "Cecile! Cecile! Are you there?"
"It's mother's voice," said Jammes. "What's the matter?"
She opened the door. A respectable lady, built on the lines of a
Pomeranian grenadier, burst into the dressing-room and dropped groaning
into a vacant arm-chair. Her eyes rolled madly in her brick-dust
colored face.
"How awful!" she said. "How awful!"
"What? What?"
"Joseph Buquet!"
"What about him?"
"Joseph Buquet is dead!"
The room became filled with exclamations, with astonished outcries,
with scared requests for explanations.
"Yes, he was found hanging in the third-floor cellar!"
"It's the ghost!" little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself;
but she at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth:
"No, no!--I, didn't say it!--I didn't say it!----"
All around her, her panic-stricken companions repeated under their
breaths: "Yes--it must be the ghost!"
Sorelli was very pale.
"I shall never be able to recite my speech," she said.
Ma Jammes gave her opinion, while she emptied a glass of liqueur that
happened to be standing on a table; the ghost must have something to do
with it.