"Noon train," says Mame, "and be home in time to cook supper as natural as life and as good as new."
Ellen kept looking at them, and I guessed what she was thinking: A hundred miles they'd come for a change, and all they'd got was two street-car rides and a bowl of oyster soup apiece and this call, and they were going home satisfied.
All of a sudden Ellen sat up straight in her chair.
"See," she says, "it's only eight o'clock. Why can't the four of us go to the theater?"
The two women sort of gasped, in two hitches.
"Us?" they says.
Ellen jumped up. "Quick, Calliope," she says. "Get your things on. Delia can stay with the baby. I'll telephone for a taxi. We can decide what to see on the way down. You'll go, won't you?" she asks 'em.
"Go!" says they, in one breath. "Oh—yes, sir!"
In no time, or thereabouts, we found ourselves down-stairs packing into the taxicab. I was just as much excited as anybody—I hadn't been to a play in years. Ellen told us what there was as we went down, but they might have been the names of French cooking for all they meant to us, and we left it to her to pick out where we were to go.
When we followed her down the aisle of the one she picked out, just after the curtain went up, where do you think she took us? Into a box! It was so dark that Mis' Toplady and Mame never noticed until the curtain went down, and the lights came up, and we looked round.