ll don't see where _we_ get off any
better."

"You wait.... So we sell for just one particular performance--say the
8.45 one, one night a week--season tickets. Boxes, loges, and some of
the orchestra seats. And it would be like opera; if they couldn't
always come, they couldn't return their tickets, but they could give
them to somebody else. And that night we'd have special music, and--"

"Confirming today's conversation, including brutal frankness as per
statement, I still don't see--"

"Why, you silly. It'll be _Society Night_! And I don't care whether
it's movies or opera, if you make a thing fashionable, then it gets
_every_body--the fashionable ones, and then the ones who _want_ to be
fashionable, and finally the ones who know they haven't a ghost of a
chance, and just want to go and look at the others!"

Henry laboured with his thoughts. "Well, granted that we could herd
the hill crowd in there, and all that, I _still_ don't--"

"Why, Henry darling! Because we'd make it _Monday_ night--that's our
worst night in the whole week, ordinarily--and have _all_ reserved
seats that night, and then of course we'd raise the prices!"

"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.

"Why, he had several, didn't he?"

"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