“A few? How many do you suppose?” And Hyacinth checked himself. “Do you suppose if I had been serious I would tell?”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Mr Vetch murmured, with a sigh. Then he went on: “You want to take her to my shop, eh?”
“I’m sorry to say she won’t go there. She wants something in the Strand: that’s a great point. She wants very much to see the Pearl of Paraguay. I don’t wish to pay anything, if possible; I am sorry to say I haven’t a penny. But as you know people at the other theatres, and I have heard you say that you do each other little favours, from place to place—à charge de revanche, as the French say—it occurred to me that you might be able to get me an order. The piece has been running a long time, and most people (except poor devils like me) must have seen it: therefore there probably isn’t a rush.”
Mr Vetch listened in silence, and presently he said, “Do you want a box?”
“Oh no; something more modest.”
“Why not a box?” asked the fiddler, in a tone which Hyacinth knew.
“Because I haven’t got the clothes that people wear in that sort of place, if you must have such a definite reason.”
“And your young lady—has she got the clothes?”
“Oh, I dare say; she seems to have everything.”
“Where does she get them?”