"Oh!" said Henry. "Now I get it. I thought it was just swank."
"And it's true--it's _true_ that if you get people to thinking there's something exclusive about a shop, or a hotel, or a club, or even a theatre, they'll pay _any_ amount to get in. And _our_ friends don't care when they come, and they'll _love_ all sitting together in the boxes, or even in the orchestra."
"Who was Methuselah's wife?" asked Henry, irrelevantly.
"Cleopatra, Portia, Minerva, Nemesis, and the Queen of Sheba," said Henry, "and you're all five in one package. I retract everything I said. And if I may be permitted to kiss the hem of your garment, to show I'm properly humbled, why--in plain English, that idea has a full set of molars!"
He left the mechanics of it to Anna, who merely conferred with Bob Standish, and then with one of her girl-friends, and sent out a little circular among the high elect; but even Anna was amazed at the prompt response. The response was due partly to friendship, and partly to convenience, but whatever the reason, Anna brought in checks for a hundred season-tickets, and turned the worst night of the week into the best. As she had sensed, because the insiders of society were willing to commit themselves to Monday, the outsiders would have paid four times, instead of merely double, to be there, too. It was socially imperative.
"That boosts us up another fifty a week," said Henry appreciatively. "And we must have a thousand in the bank, haven't we?... Say, Anna, this bread and cheese racket is all right when you can't afford anything else, but honestly, won't you just get a cook? I don't care if she's rotten, but to think of you giving those dishes a sitz-bath twice a day--"
"Not yet, dear. We aren't _nearly_ out of the woods. Society Night's helped a lot, but we aren't averaging over two hundred and twenty yet, are we? That's eighty a week short. So if we don't think up some more schemes, why, what we're saving now'll have to be our capital _next_ year."
"Yes, and you owe ten thousand on a mortgage, and the tax bills haven't come in yet, and you'll have an income tax to pay.... We'll save awhile longer."
It was greater heroism than he realized, for she had never lost, for a single instant, her abhorrence of the kitchen; nor was she willing to cater to her prejudice, and work with only the tips of her fingers. She had two principal defences--she wore rubber gloves, and she sang--but whenever she had to put her hands into greasy water, whenever she scrubbed a kettle, whenever she cleaned the sink, a series of cold chills played up and down her spine as fitfully as a flame plays on the surface of alcohol. She detested every item which had to do with that kitchen; and yet, to save Henry the price of a cook--now seventy dollars a month--she sacrificed her squeamishness. There were nights when she simply couldn't eat--she couldn't draw a cloud over her imagination, and forget what the steak had looked like, and felt like, uncooked. There were six days in seven when the mere sight of blackened pots and pans put her nerves on edge. But she always remembered that Henry was supposed to be irresponsible, and that a penny in hand is worth two in prospect; so that she sang away, and tried to dispel her thoughts of the kitchen by thinking about the Orpheum.