Helen did not follow up her remark. It had been scattered in the comments. Gage caught her eye and she gave him a look which said, “I told you there was something in that girl.” Gage immediately wanted to leave the table and tell Helen all about it. But Mrs. Brownley wanted to know something again. He turned to her. It was fairly easy for Freda after all, in spite of Barbara, whose measuring eyes made her nervous whenever they were turned on her. She had a difficult time concealing the broken finger-nail and she was not at all sure whether to lift the finger bowl off the fruit plate with the lace doily or to leave the doily. Otherwise there were no great difficulties. There was a bad moment after dinner when it became clear to her that there was some altercation among the young people which concerned her. She could not guess what it was, but she saw Allie and Barbara in heated conclave. Then, with a little toss of her head, Allie came to her. “We thought that you and I and Fred and Tony would go down to the Majestic. We had six tickets but Bob seems to think she and Ted have another date.” And then Ted ruined things. He turned from where he and Tony Bates were smoking by the mantelpiece and strolled over to Freda. “We’re going to the Majestic--and I’m going to sit next to you,” he announced. III The Majestic was a vaudeville house, presenting its seven acts weekly for the delectation of its patrons, servant girls, business men, impecunious boys in the gallery, suburbanites, shop girls with their young men, traveling men, idle people, parties of young people like the Brownley girls, one of those heterogeneous crowds that a dollar and a half price for a best seat can bring in America. When the young Brownleys arrived, the acrobatic act which led the bill was over and the two poorest comedians, put on near the beginning of the bill before the audience grew too wearily critical, were doing a buck and wing dance to the accompaniment of some quite ununderstandable words. With a great deal of noise and mysterious laughter the late arrivals became seated finally, taking their places with the lack of consideration for the people behind them which was characteristic of their arrogance, making audible and derogatory comments about the act on the stage and curiously enough not seeming to anger any one. The girls with their fur coats, hatless, well dressed hair, the sleek dinner coated young men interested the people around them far more than they bothered them by their noisiness. They left during the last act and before the moving picture of “Current Events,” all six of them getting into the Bates’ sedan and speeding at forty miles an hour out to the Roadside Inn which was kept open only until midnight.