"Aw, come on!" the acrobat urged.
"I'm awful glad to see you, Dick," he added, putting his arm around the boy, of kind impulse; "and I'd like to give you a good time—for Millie's sake."
The boy was still doubtful. "I had better go home," he said.
"Oh, now, don't you be afraid of me, Dick. I'll take you home after the show. We got lots of time. Aw, come on!"
It occurred to the boy that Providence had ordered events in answer to his prayer.
"Thank you," he said.
"You'll have a good time," the acrobat promised. "They say Flannigan's got a good show."
They made their way to the Burlesque. Flannigan's Forty Flirts there held the boards. "Girls! Just Girls! Grass Widows and Merry Maids! No Nonsense About 'Em! Just Girls! Girls!" The foul and tawdry aspect of the entrance oppressed the child. He felt some tragic foreboding....
Within it was dark to the boy's eyes. The air was hot and foul—stagnant, exhausted: the stale exhalation of a multitude of lungs which vice was rotting; tasting of their very putridity. A mist of tobacco smoke filled the place—was still rising in bitter, stifling clouds. There was a nauseating smell of beer and sweat and disinfectants. The boy's foot felt the unspeakable slime of the floor: he tingled with disgust.
An illustrated song was in listless progress. The light, reflected from the screen, revealed a throng of repulsive faces, stretching, row upon row, into the darkness of the rear, into the shadows of the roof—sickly and pimpled and bloated flesh: vicious faces, hopeless, vacuous, diseased. And these were the faces that leered and writhed in the boy's dreams of hell. Here, present and tangible, were gathered all his terrors. He was in the very midst of sin.