For the first night Old Mole received, with Mr. Butcher's compliments, a ticket for Box B. Panoukian and Robert came to dinner. Matilda wore her first evening dress and the opera cloak, a red ribbon in her hair, and graced the front of the box with the three men behind her. There is a certain manner appropriate to a seat in the front of a box--a consciousness that is not quite self-consciousness, a certain setting back of the shoulders, a lifting of the head, a sort of shy brazenness, an acceptance of being part of the show, and, for all the pit knows, a duchess. Matilda had caught it to perfection and turned a dignified profile to the opera glasses directed upon her. Panoukian pointed out the political personages in the stalls, and, being a great reader of those glossy photographic papers, which are perhaps the most typical product of the time, was able to recognize many of the literary and artistic celebrities of the moment. Actresses glided fussily to their seats, smiling acknowledgment to the applause of the groundlings. There was a bobbing up and down, a bowing and a smiling, a waving of programs and fans from acquaintance to acquaintance, a chatter and hum of many voices that drowned the jigging overture, and went droning on into the first few moments of the play. Old Mole's memory of it was hazy, but sufficiently alive to quarrel with some of the impressions he now had of it and to enable him to distinguish between the work of the actors and the work of the author. The play was worse and better than he had thought. In his recollection it was not so entirely unscrupulous in its appeal to the surface emotions, nor so extraordinarily adroit in sliding off into a dry, sly and perfectly irrelevant humor just at the moment when those base appeals looked as though they were going to be pushed so far as to offend even the thickest sensibilities. Each curtain was brought down with a neat, wistful little joke, except at the end of the third act, when, in silence, Lossie, the little unloved heroine of the play, prepared to cook the supper for the husband who had just left her. In the fourth act he came back and ate it, so that all ended happily. The atmosphere was Lancashire, and the actors spoke Scots, Irish, Belfast, Somerset, and Wigan, but that did not seem to matter. The actress who played Lossie spoke with a very good Thrigsby accent, and her performance was full of charm. She had a fine voice and knew how to use it, and her awkwardness of gesture suited the uncouthness with which the Lancashire folk were endowed. She and the sad little jokes carried all before them, and there was tremendous applause at the end of each act and the close of the play. Mr. Henry Butcher made a grateful little speech, and, looking toward Old Mole's box, said the author was not in the house. All eyes were turned toward the box, and the shouting was renewed.