"And give a good return for it. Yes, she had paid me already for my sketches--a prompt and business-like way of doing things that I should be glad to encounter oftener." Abner shook his head sadly. "I thought we might come to be real friends." "And I hope so yet. Anyway, it takes a little money to keep the tea-pot boiling." Abner drifted back to the shelter of his canopy and darkly accused himself for his acceptance of such hospitality. He ought to go, to go at once, and never to come back. But before he found out how to go, Clytie Summers came along and hemmed him in. Clytie was not at all afraid of big men; she had already found them easier to manage than little ones. Indeed she had pretty nearly come to the conclusion that a lively young girl with a trim figure and a bright, confident manner and a fetching mop of sunlit hair and a pair of wide, forthputting, blue eyes was predestined to have her own way with about everybody alike. But Clytie had never met an Abner Joyce. And as soon as Clytie entered upon the particulars of her last slumming trip through the river wards she began to discover the difference. She chanced to mention incidentally certain low-grade places of amusement. "What!" cried Abner; "you go to theatres--and _such_ theatres?" "Surely I do!" cried Clytie in turn, no less disconcerted than Abner himself. "Surely I go to theatres; don't you?" "Never," replied Abner firmly. "I have other uses for my money." His rules of conduct marshalled themselves in a stiff row before him; forlorn Flatfield came into view. Neither his principles nor his practice of making monthly remittances to the farm permitted such excesses. "Why, it doesn't _cost_ anything," rejoined Clytie. "There's no admission charge. All you have to do is to buy a drink now and then." "Buy a drink?" "Beer--that will do. You can stay as long as you want to on a couple of glasses. Lots of our girls didn't take but one." "Lots of----?" "Yes, the whole class went. We found the place most interesting--and the audience. The men sit about with their hats on, you know, in a big hall full of round tables, drinking and smoking----" "And you mixed up in such a----?" "Well, no; not exactly. We had a box--as I suppose you would call it; three of them. Of course that _did_ cost a little something. And then Mr. Whyland bought a few cigars----" "Mr. Whyland----?" "Yes, he was with us; he thought there ought to be at least one gentleman along. He couldn't smoke the cigars, but one of the girls happened to have some cigarettes----" "Cigarettes?" "Yes, and we found _their_ smoke much more endurable. That was the worst about the place--the smoke; unless it was the performance----" "Oh!" said Abner, with a groan of disgust.