Normally, however, they were intensely afraid of Art except at their barbers’, and
they had heard, in various ways as vague as Broad Street rumors, something concerning these gatherings of the elect at the New Arts Theater on Saturday afternoons, where unselfish reformers produced plays for Art’s sake as a rebuke to managers who declined to produce that sort of play for anybody’s sake.
“I’ll bet,” said Harrow, “that some thrifty genius sent Stanley West those tickets in a desperate endeavor to amalgamate the aristocracies of wealth and intellect!—as though you could shake ’em up as you shake a cocktail! As though you’d catch your Uncle Stanley wearing his richest Burgundy flush, sitting in the orchestra and talking Arr Noovo to a young thing with cheek-bones who’d pinch him into a cocked hat for a contribution between the acts!”
“Still,” said Lethbridge, “even Art requires a wad to pay its license. Isn’t West the foxy Freddie! Do you suppose, if we go, they’ll sting us for ten?”
“They’ll probably take up a collection for the professor,” said Harrow gloomily. “Better come to the club and give the tickets to the janitor.”
“Oh, that’s putting it all over Art! If anybody
with earnest eyes tries to speak to us we can call a policeman.”
“Well,” said Harrow, “on your promise to keep your mouth shut I’ll go with you. If you open it they’ll discover you’re an appraiser and I’m a broker, and then they’ll think we’re wealthy, because there’d be no other reason for our being there, and they’ll touch us both for a brace of come-ons, and——”
“Perhaps,” interrupted the other, “we’ll be fortunate enough to sit next to a peach! And as it’s the proper thing there to talk to your neighbor, the prospect—er—needn’t jar you.”
There was a silence as they walked up-town, which lasted until they entered their lodgings. And by that time they had concluded to go.