He was chilled into quietness till Papa Gouroff, the owner of the restaurant, arrived from above-stairs. Papa Gouroff was a Russian Jew who had been a police spy in Poland and a hotel proprietor in Mogador, where he called himself Turkish and married a renegade Armenian. He had a nose like a sickle and a neck like a blue-gum nigger. He hoped that the place would degenerate into a Bohemian restaurant where liberal clergymen would think they were slumming, and barbers would think they were entering society, so he always wore a _fez_ and talked bad Arabic. He was local color, atmosphere, Bohemian flavor. Mr. Wrenn murmured to Theresa: “Say, do you see that man? He’s Signor Gouroff, the owner. I’ve talked to him a lot of times. Ain’t he great! Golly! look at that beak of his. Don’t he make you think of _kiosks_ and _hyrems_ and stuff? Gee! What does he make you think—” “He’s got on a dirty collar…. That waiter’s awful slow…. Would you please be so kind and pour me another glass of water?” But when she reached the honied _bourma_ she grew tolerant toward Mr. Wrenn. She had two cups of cocoa and felt fat about the eyes and affectionate. She had mentioned that there were good shows in town. Now she resumed: “Have you been to ‘The Gold Brick’ yet?” “No, I—uh—I don’t go to the theater much.” “Gwendolyn Muzzy was telling me that this was the funniest show she’d ever seen. Tells how two confidence men fooled one of those terrible little jay towns. Shows all the funny people, you know, like they have in jay towns…. I wish I could go to it, but of course I have to help out the folks at home, so— Well…. Oh dear.” “Say! I’d like to take you, if I could. Let’s go—this evening!” He quivered with the adventure of it. “Why, I don’t know; I didn’t tell Ma I was going to be out. But—oh, I guess it would be all right if I was with you.” “Let’s go right up and get some tickets.” “All right.” Her assent was too eager, but she immediately corrected that error by yawning, “I don’t suppose I’d ought to go, but if you want to—” They were a very lively couple as they walked up. He trickled sympathy when she told of the selfishness of the factory girls under her and the meanness of the superintendent over her, and he laughed several times as she remarked that the superintendent “ought to be boiled alive—that’s what _all_ lobsters ought to be,” so she repeated the epigram with such increased jollity that they swung up to the theater in a gale; and, once facing the ennuied ticket-seller, he demanded dollar seats just as though he had not been doing sums all the way up to prove that seventy-five-cent seats were the best he could afford.