"See," she says, "it's only eight o'clock. Why can't the four of us go to the theater?" The two women sort of gasped, in two hitches. "Us?" they says. Ellen jumped up. "Quick, Calliope," she says. "Get your things on. Delia can stay with the baby. I'll telephone for a taxi. We can decide what to see on the way down. You'll go, won't you?" she asks 'em. "Go!" says they, in one breath. "Oh--yes, _sir_!" In no time, or thereabouts, we found ourselves down-stairs packing into the taxicab. I was just as much excited as anybody--I hadn't been to a play in years. Ellen told us what there was as we went down, but they might have been the names of French cooking for all they meant to us, and we left it to her to pick out where we were to go. When we followed her down the aisle of the one she picked out, just after the curtain went up, where do you think she took us? _Into a box!_ It was so dark that Mis' Toplady and Mame never noticed until the curtain went down, and the lights came up, and we looked round. As for me, I could hardly listen to the play. I was thinking of these two dear women from the village, and what it meant to them to have something different to do. But even more, I was watching Ellen, that had set out to make them have a good time, and was doing her best at it, getting them to talk and making them laugh, when the curtain was down. But when the curtain was up, it seemed to me that Ellen wasn't listening to the play so very much, either. Before the last act, Ellen had to get back to the baby, so we left the two of them there and went home. "Alone in the box!" says Mame Holcomb, as we were leaving. "My land, and my hat's trimmed on the wrong side for the audience!" "Do we have to go when it's out?" says Mis' Toplady. "Won't they just leave us set here, on--and on--and on?" I remember them as I looked back and saw them, sitting there together. And something, I dunno whether it was the wedding-trip poplin dress, or the thought of the two dining-rooms where they'd set for so long, or of the little lark they'd planned, sort of made a lump come and meet a word I was trying to say. We'd got out to the entry of the box, when somebody came after us, and it was little bit of Mame Holcomb, looking up with eyes bright as a blue jay's at the feed-dish. "Oh," she says to Ellen, "I ain't half told you--neither of us has--what this means to us. And I wanted you to know--we both of us do--that the best part is, you so sort of _understood_." Ellen just bent over and kissed her. And when we came out in the hall, all light and red carpet, I see Ellen's eyes were full of tears. And when we got in the taxicab: "Ellen," I says, "I thank you, too--ever so much. You did understand. So did I." "I don't know--I don't know," she says "But, Calliope, how in the world do you understand that kind of thing?" So I said it, right out plain: