“To see two perfectly natural children!” The blue eyes under the motor-hood sought her husband’s. “But society children, I suppose, Hawley—in The Rut, you know?”
“Yes, m’ dear, certainly; jus’ ’s you say.” He looked down at her with the benignity of a large Newfoundland.
“To the Elbert Lewises’, then—good-by, good-by!” And Sheila’s fluffy curls swirled round, hiding her face, as she was carried smoothly away.
“In the groove,” Ellen reminded Patsy and Doromea. “The man who wrote The Rut was right when he called it bondage, because the people fit it so exactly. Poor little Sheila!—there’s something very pathetic about her at times.”
“It’s because of her blind satisfaction with surface things,” said Doromea.
“Because she’s simply a society person,” said Patsy.
Monday night, and, at Peter Butler’s Theatre, The Rut was nearing its big scene. Doromea and Timothy, Ellen and Knollys, sat well toward the front of the box—breathless with anticipations realized; Sheila and her big, immovable husband were farther back—out of sight almost, against the box door.
Timothy looked back at them anxiously. “I don’t suppose they’re thinking much about it,” he sighed; “they look a good deal more taken up with each other. And it’s the greatest play of our age—such a shame Patsy didn’t come—nobody will ever do anything that can touch it; unless, of course, the same author——”
“Sheila says the author doesn’t care to write any more,” said Doromea, as the curtain went down on the first act. “Mr. Butler told Sheila that if only the man would keep on, he could make a fortune and anything else he liked out of plays. But he seems a strange creature, the author; he prefers to remain just a Plain Person. No one even knows his name, except Peter Butler.”
“Then how do they know he’s a man?” asked Timothy, suddenly. “Very probably, you know, he isn’t—— I say, Dorry, Mr. Butler’s coming into the box. After this next act I’m going to ask him.”