“No, Bobby,” she said kindly; “there are spots, you know, where angels fear to tread.”
But Agnes took the declaration with no levity whatever.
“You don’t mean in a theatrical sense?” she inquired.
“In a theatrical sense,” he insisted. “I am about to back the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company.”
“Why, Bobby!” objected Agnes, aghast. “You surely don’t mean it! I never thought you would contemplate anything so preposterous as that. I thought it was to be only a benefit!”
“It’s only a temporary arrangement,” he reassured her, laughing that he had been taken so seriously. “I’m arranging so that they can earn their way out of town; that’s all. I am taking you down now to see their first rehearsal.”
“I don’t care to go,” she declared, in a tone so piqued that Bobby turned to her in mute astonishment.
Aunt Constance laughed at his look of utter perplexity.
“How little you understand, Bobby,” she said. “Don’t you see that Agnes is merely jealous?”
“Indeed not!” Agnes indignantly denied. “That is an idea more absurd than the fact that Bobby should go into such an enterprise at all. However, since I lay myself open to such a suspicion I shall offer no further objection to going.”