“Of course not!” laughed Millicent.
“Just whetting our appetites for anything new that offers at the club,” said Bruce. “I’m glad I’m a new man in town; I can listen to all the scandal without being obliged to take sides.”
“Millie! You hate gossip,” said Helen, “so please talk about the saints so I won’t have a chance to chatter about the sinners.”
“Don’t worry,” said Bruce. “If there were no sinners the saints wouldn’t know how good they are!”
“We’d better quit on that,” said Helen. “It’s time to go!”
II
At the hall where the Dramatic Club’s entertainments were given they met Shepherd Mills, who confessed that he had been holding four seats in the hope that they’d have pity on him and not let him sit alone.
“I’ve hardly seen Connie for a week,” he said. “This thing of having a wife on the stage is certainly hard on the husband!”
The room was filled to capacity and there were many out of town guests, whom Shep named proudly as though their presence were attributable to the fact that Connie was on the program.
Whitford, in his ample leisure, had been putting new spirit into the club, and the first two of the one-act plays that constituted the bill disclosed new talent and were given with precision and finish. Chief interest, however, lay in the third item of the bill, a short poetic drama written by Whitford himself. The scene, revealed as the curtain rose, was of Whitford’s own designing—the battlements of a feudal castle, with a tower rising against a sweep of blue sky. The set transcended anything that the club had seen in its long history and was greeted with a quick outburst of applause. Whitford’s name passed over the room, it seemed, in a single admiring whisper. George was a genius; the town had never possessed anyone comparable to George Whitford, who distinguished himself alike in war and in the arts of peace and could afford to spend money with a free hand on amateur theatricals.