A heavily equipped chauffeur ascended the stairway, bearing the message that Mrs. Levy awaited her son and his lady.  Thereupon, having devoured the last sound permitted (by the managers) to issue from Verman, Mr. Levy and Miss Jones departed to a real matinee at a real theatre, the limpid eyes of Marjorie looking back softly over her shoulder—­but only at the tattooed wild boy.  Nearly always it is woman who puts the irony into life.

After this, perhaps because of sated curiosity, perhaps on account of a pin famine, the attendance began to languish.  Only four responded to the next call of the band; the four dwindled to three; finally the entertainment was given for one blase auditor, and Schofield and Williams looked depressed.  Then followed an interval when the band played in vain.

About three o’clock Schofield and Williams were gloomily discussing various unpromising devices for startling the public into a renewal of interest, when another patron unexpectedly appeared and paid a cent for his admission.  News of the Big Show and Museum of Curiosities had at last penetrated the far, cold spaces of interstellar niceness, for this new patron consisted of no less than Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, escaped in a white “sailor suit” from the Manor during a period of severe maternal and tutorial preoccupation.

He seated himself without parley, and the pufformance was offered for his entertainment with admirable conscientiousness.  True to the Lady Clara caste and training, Roderick’s pale, fat face expressed nothing except an impervious superiority and, as he sat, cold and unimpressed upon the front bench, like a large, white lump, it must be said that he made a discouraging audience “to play to.”  He was not, however, unresponsive—­far from it.  He offered comment very chilling to the warm grandiloquence of the orator.

“That’s my uncle Ethelbert’s dachshund,” he remarked, at the beginning of the lecture.  “You better take him back if you don’t want to get arrested.”  And when Penrod, rather uneasily ignoring the interruption, proceeded to the exploitation of the genuine, full-blooded Indian dog, Duke, “Why don’t you try to give that old dog away?” asked Roderick.  “You couldn’t sell him.”

“My papa would buy me a lots better ’coon than that,” was the information volunteered a little later, “only I wouldn’t want the nasty old thing.”

Herman of the missing finger obtained no greater indulgence.  “Pooh!” said Roderick.  “We have two fox-terriers in our stables that took prizes at the kennel show, and their tails were bit off.  There’s a man that always bites fox-terriers’ tails off.”

“Oh, my gosh, what a lie!” exclaimed Sam Williams ignorantly.

“Go on with the show whether he likes it or not, Penrod.  He’s paid his money.”

Verman, confident in his own singular powers, chuckled openly at the failure of the other attractions to charm the frosty visitor, and, when his turn came, poured forth a torrent of conversation which was straightway damned.