After the dinner and the hat-boy—the theater. You suggest the theater to Katherine. She is enthusiastic. You pick the theater. It is close at hand and you quickly find your way to it. A gentleman, whose politeness is of a variety, somewhat frappé, awaits you in the box-office. A line of hopeful mortals is shuffling toward him, to disperse with hope left behind. But this anticipates.
You inquire of the man in the box-office for two seats—two particularly good seats. You remember going to the theater in Indianapolis once upon a time, a stranger, and having been seated behind the fattest theater pillar that you could have ever possibly imagined. But you need not worry about the pillars in this New York playhouse. The box-office gentleman, whose thoughts seem to be a thousand miles away, blandly replies that the house is sold out.
"So good?" you brashly venture. You had not fancied this production so successful. He does not even assume to hear your comment. You decide that you will see this particular play at a later time. You suggest as much to the indifferent creature behind the wicket. He replies by telling you that he can only give you tickets for a Monday or Tuesday three weeks hence—and then nothing ahead of the seventeenth row. Can he not do better than that? He cannot. He is positive that he cannot. And his positiveness is Gibraltarian in its immobility. A faint sign of irritation covers his bland face. He wants you to see that you are taking too much of his time.
Katherine saves the situation. She whispers to you that she noticed a little shop nearby with a sign "Tickets for all Theaters" displayed upon it.
"You know they abolished the speculators two years ago," she explains.
You move on to the little shop with the inviting sign. The gentleman behind its counters has manners at least. He greets you with the smile of the professional shopkeeper.
"Have you tickets for 'The Giddiest Girl'?" you inquire.
He smiles ingratiatingly. Of course he has, for any night and anywhere you wish them.
"What is the price of them?"
You are not coldly commercial but, despite that smile, merely apprehensive. And you are beginning to understand New York.