“I’m really afraid, Ned,” said Dorothy, “the traffic is so awful, you know you aren’t accustomed to driving through such crowds.”
“If you stand there arguing all afternoon, there won’t be any trouble about getting through the crowd, of course,” gently reminded Ned. “It’s a limousine and a dandy! Bigger than the _Fire Bird_ and a beautiful yellow!”
“Yellow!” cried Tavia in horror. “With my complexion! Couldn’t you engage a car to match my hair?”
“And my feathers are green!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Just like a man, engage a car and never ask what shade we prefer!”
Tavia sat down in mock dismay. “Our afternoon is spoiled! No self-respecting person in this town ever rides in a car that doesn’t match!”
“Oh, tommyrot,” said Ned in deep disgust, listening in all seriousness to the girls’ banter. “Who is going to look at us? Never heard of such foolishness!” And he dug his hands into his pockets, and walked gloomily about the room.
“Ned, dear, you’re a darling,” enthused Dorothy, “you don’t really believe we are so imbued with the spirit of New York as to demand that?”
“Ned really has paid us the greatest compliment,” said Tavia, complacently, “he believed it was all true, and only geniuses can produce that effect.”
Fifteen minutes later, after several near-collisions, Ned drove the yellow car up to the entrance of the theatre, and while he was getting his check from the lobby usher, the girls tripped into the playhouse.
They had box seats. With intense interest the girls watched the continuous throng pouring into their places. Few of the passing crowd, however, returned the lavish interest that was centered on them from the first floor box; no one in the vast audience knew or cared that two country girls were having their first glimpse of a New York theatre audience. They saw nothing unusual in the eager, smiling young faces, and as Dorothy said to Tavia, only the striking, unique and frightfully unusual would get more than a passing glance from those that journey through New York town.
But Dorothy and Tavia did not look at the crowd long. It was something to be in a metropolitan theatre, witnessing one of the great successes of the season.
Soon the curtain rolled up on the first act, a beautiful parlor scene, and Tavia gave a gasp.