“Gee! this is a rotten show!” whispered Pat Crear.
“Well, it didn’t cost you nottin’!” said Joe.
“Ain’t nottin’ to it!”
“Not to an ign’rant little mutt like you.”
“Let’s go down to Fourteent’ street. Somepin doin’ there.”
“Go ahead.”
But Pat would not go alone.
There was a fresh-complected Johnny in the play who was stuck on the little woman with the proud nose, and they were fixing to get married. But all his folks were dead against it; for why, Joe could not understand, since she was certainly the pick of the basket. There was a lot of lahdy-dah talk he didn’t understand. He was interested in studying the details of that house, and the looks and manners of its high-toned inmates. He particularly admired the cool way the men handled themselves; lighting their cigars and pouring their drinks. Actin’ as if they owned the earth, he thought; and that’s the right way to act. It takes the heart out of the poor boobs.
Finally there was a scene in what looked like a book-store; but Joe picked up in the course of the action that it was called library, and all the books belonged to the man who lived in that house. There was a long talk in this room between a big guy who let on he was a lawyer—he was the fresh-complected Johnnie’s uncle; and the little woman with the proud nose, who was now wearing a grey dress even sweller than the white one. Bit by bit the lawyer guy broke her down (But not really, because all the time she was crying and carrying on, she was still looking around with that unbeatable eye) and it all came out that she had had a kid, and wasn’t married at all. This discovery rather dashed Joe; for he had forgotten that it was a play, but this was just the same as the plays on the Bowery. In real life for a girl to have a kid wasn’t nothing. But maybe it was different in high society.
The noisy scene drew Pat Crear’s attention back to the stage. When the curtain fell, he said: “Aah! I’d like to paste that fat slob! What he wanta make t’ guyl cry fer?”