"Well, I am. What did you want to see the Admiral for? Some Mission business, I s'pose. . . .Oh, you needn't tell if you don't choose; I'm not dying to hear."
They stood side by side on the Hoe, watching the fireworks. Three or four searchlights were playing over the Sound, turned now upon the anchored craft, now upward, following the rockets, and again downward, crisscrossing their white rays as if to catch the dropping multi-coloured stars. "O—o—oh!" exclaimed Milly, as each shower of rockets exploded. "But what makes you jump like that?"
"I say," he asked after a time, "since we've come to enjoy ourselves why not do the thing thoroughly? What do you say to the theatre after this?"
"The theatre! Well, you are gettin' on! That would be 'eavenly.
They've got the 'Charity Girl' on this week—Gertie Lennox dancing.
But don't you disapprove of that sort of thing?"
"So I—I mean I don't make a practice of it. But perhaps—once in a way—"
"I love it; though 'tisn't often I gets the chance. I dunno what Dick would say, though."
She said it archly, meaning to suggest that Dick might be jealous.
John Gilbart misunderstood.
"But that's foolish. Why not to-night as well as any other night? What difference can it make to—to—" He broke off, laughing a little wildly. "We'll go and give each other moral support. We'll take tickets for the pit—no, the dress circle!"
"The dress circle!" There was awe in Milly's voice; her hand went up to her head. "They make you take your 'at off there. Oh, I couldn't!" But he caught her by the arm and hurried her off almost at a run—the girl giggling and panting and beginning to enjoy herself amazingly.
The performance had begun; but they found seats in the front row of the dress circle, almost before she had ceased panting, and Milly was unpinning her hat and glancing up at the gallery on the chance of an envious friendly recognition. The lights, the colours, the clash of brass in the orchestra made Gilbart's head spin. A stout tenore robusto in the uniform of a naval lieutenant was parading the stage in halos of mauve and green lime-light, and bawling his own praises to a semicircle of females. Gilbart's ear caught and retained but a line or two of their shrill chorus: