“At length there was a hiss beneath the box, and I directed their attention to it, informing them that it was meant to command silence, it being contrary to custom to talk during the performance. Mrs. Dilberry rolled up her eyes, and put her tongue into her cheek by way of being humorous, Miss Esther Ann screwed her shoulders and answered me huffishly that she supposed they should know how to behave, and Jane Louisa giggled, and kept her handkerchief to her mouth, every few moments looking back at me, as if it were an excellent joke. “When the first act was over, a gentleman who sat between them and me, and who must have been exceedingly annoyed by their constantly leaning past him, proposed that I should exchange seats with him, which I could not refuse, though it made matters worse for me. ‘Why don’t you admire my bouquet, Mr. Allanby?’ said Jane Louisa, poking in my face a great clumsy bunch of larkspurs, ragged-robins, mallows, and those coarse, yellow lilies that shut up at night, garnished by a foliage of asparagus, ‘I was in despair about a bouquet for my evening-dress, when, luckily, I came across this when we walked through the market-house on our way from your sister’s. I do doat on bouquets.’ ‘Now do stop talking about that borquay,’ interrupted the old lady, ‘after such nonsensical extravagance as throwing away money for it. Why at home we could get a wheelbarrow full of such trash out of any body’s garden for nothing. But it seems to me you city people would be for making money out of the very dirt in the gutters.’ ‘La, maw, they only cost a six-pence, but you are so matter-of-fact, you don’t love flowers; we do, though, don’t we, Mr. Allanby?’ said Miss Jane Louisa. “‘If you had told Mr. Allanby you wanted a bouquet,’ observed Esther Ann, ‘I dare say he would have brought you one, for we’ve heard that city gentlemen make it a point to give bouquets to ladies they wish to be polite to, and don’t mind how much they have to pay for them.’ “When the curtain rose again, the eye of Jane Louisa was caught by one of the understrappers, a tall fellow with a huge false _moustache_. ‘Who is that splendid looking young man!’ exclaimed she—not one of them having discernment enough to make out a single performer or character from the bill and the play; ‘isn’t he beautiful! I’m quite in love with him, I declare; why don’t they applaud him, Mr. Allanby? he’s so elegant!’ and greatly to my relief, she was so much taken up in looking at her new hero, and in watching for his appearance, that she withdrew her attention from me.