"Please—please let me walk." He helped her in and closed the apron sharply. He was annoyed. That was the second time she had insisted on his poverty. He thought she had a little too much the air of preparing herself to be a poor man's wife. Of course it was pretty of her; but he thought it would have been prettier still if she had let it alone.
Now Flossie had never thought of him as a poor man before to-night; but somehow the idea of the good income he might have had and hadn't made him appear poor by comparison. She lay back in the hansom meditating. "If you could only write a play like that, Keith, what a lot of money you'd make."
"Shouldn't I? But then, you see, I couldn't write a play like that."
"Rubbish. I don't believe that author—what d'you call him?—is so very much cleverer than you."
"Thanks." He bowed ironically.
"Well, I mean it. And look how they clapped him—why, they made as much fuss about him as any of the actors. I say, wouldn't you like to hear them calling 'Author! Author!'? And then clapping!"
"H'm!"
"Oh, wouldn't you love it just; you needn't pretend! Look there, I declare I've split my glove." (That meant, as Flossie had calculated, a new pair that she should not have to pay for.)
"If you clapped me I would, Flossie. I should need all the consolation I could get if I'd written as bad a play."
"Well, if that was a bad play, I'd like to see a good one."