And she changed the subject to the entertainment before them.
Ambler House had taken the first row in the balcony, for from this vantage point the girls, their bare arms leaning on the polished rail, could stare down and pick out their faculty friends and their celebrity acquaintances, and, also, they got a better view of the stage, and could hear the music to better advantage than from any other seats.
One of the girls of the house was given an orchestra ticket and was thus bought off from her position in the theater’s “rubber row,” as their chosen place was most inelegantly called.
“Now, Mrs. Moore, I’ll just take your coat and then you lean over and look at anybody you like. Nobody minds being stared at. Everybody’s used to it, and if a girl downstairs is wearing an especially good-looking dress, she’ll stand up and turn around and gaze about the audience for a moment so that we can be sure to get its effect. That’s what always happens,” Peggy explained blithely to their guest.
Mrs. Moore hadn’t been to the theater often, anywhere. So that, in itself, was a pleasure. But to sit in a theater crowded with girls, all in evening dress as they would have gone to a ball, their throats and arms white in the glare of the electric lights, was a never-to-be-forgotten experience.
The play was a dashing affair, all beauty and melody, and the irrepressible audience hummed the catchy airs between acts.
Also there was the customary promenade during the intermission.
The girls from the balcony went downstairs, and, threading their way through the crowded aisles in which the girls were chatting, found the seat of some friend and leaned gracefully near her for a few moments.
And the talk usually ambled along something like this:
“My dear! Aren’t you crazy about it? Honestly I never heard anything like that chorus—hm, hm, hm, hm,——”