"Say! I'd like to take you, if I could. Let's go--this evening!" He quivered with the adventure of it.
"Why, I don't know; I didn't tell Ma I was going to be out. But--oh, I guess it would be all right if I was with you."
"Let's go right up and get some tickets."
"All right." Her assent was too eager, but she immediately corrected that error by yawning, "I don't suppose I'd ought to go, but if you want to--"
They were a very lively couple as they walked up. He trickled sympathy when she told of the selfishness of the factory girls under her and the meanness of the superintendent over her, and he laughed several times as she remarked that the superintendent "ought to be boiled alive--that's what all lobsters ought to be," so she repeated the epigram with such increased jollity that they swung up to the theater in a gale; and, once facing the ennuied ticket-seller, he demanded dollar seats just as though he had not been doing sums all the way up to prove that seventy-five-cent seats were the best he could afford.
The play was a glorification of Yankee smartness. Mr. Wrenn was disturbed by the fact that the swindler heroes robbed quite all the others, but he was stirred by the brisk romance of money-making. The swindlers were supermen--blonde beasts with card indices and options instead of clubs. Not that Mr. Wrenn made any observations regarding supermen. But when, by way of commercial genius, the swindler robbed a young night clerk Mr. Wrenn whispered to Theresa, "Gee! he certainly does know how to jolly them, heh?"
"Sh-h-h-h-h-h!" said Theresa.
Every one made millions, victims and all, in the last act, as a proof of the social value of being a live American business man. As they oozed along with the departing audience Mr. Wrenn gurgled: "That makes me feel just like I'd been making a million dollars." Masterfully, he proposed, "Say, let's go some place and have something to eat."
"All right."
"Let's--I almost feel as if I could afford Rector's, after that play; but, anyway, let's go to Allaire's."
Though he was ashamed of himself for it afterward, he was almost haughty toward his waiter, and ordered Welsh rabbits and beer quite as though he usually breakfasted on them. He may even have strutted a little as he hailed a car with an imaginary walking-stick. His parting with Miss Theresa was intimate; he shook her hand warmly.
As he undressed he hoped that he had not been too abrupt with the waiter, "poor cuss." But he lay awake to think of Theresa's hair and hand-clasp; of polished desks and florid gentlemen who curtly summoned bank-presidents and who had--he tossed the bedclothes about in his struggle to get the word--who had a punch!