"I never encourage fees," replied Lowndes, shaking his twinkling face in the most fatherly fashion. He articulated his words with the utmost deliberation, however, and there was a yell of approval from the gods above. A ripple of amusement was also going round the house; for Mrs. Ringrose was holding up half-a-crown and making treacherous signs to the manager, which, however, he would not see. It seemed he was a fighting man himself, and his eyes were locked in a tussle with Lowndes's spectacles. "You must leave the theatre, that's all." "Nonsense," retorted Lowndes, with his indulgent smile. "We shall see about that. May I trouble you, ladies and gentlemen, to leave your places for one moment?" Lowndes's incomparable guffaw resounded through the auditorium. It was receiving a hearty echo in pit and gallery, when he held up his programmes, and the gods were still. The ladies and gentlemen had kept their seats. "My dear sir, why give yourself away?" said Gordon Lowndes, still chuckling, to the manager. "You daren't touch me, and you know you daren't. A pretty figure you'd cut at Bow Street to-morrow morning! Now kindly listen to me--" and he tapped the programmes authoritatively with his forefinger. "You know as well as I do that there was trouble last night in this theatre about this very thing; my dear sir, I can promise you there'll be trouble every night until you discontinue your present obsolete and short-sighted policy. How I wish you were a sensible man! Then you would think twice before attempting to force a barefaced imposition of this sort down the throats of your audience; an imposition that every theatre of repute has recognised as such and thrown overboard long and long ago. You don't force it down _my_ throat, I can tell you that. You don't bluff or bully _me_. As if we didn't pay enough for our seats without any such exorbitant extras! Why, they might as well charge us for the bill-of-fare at a first-class restaurant. Besides, what a charge! Sixpence for these--sixpence for this!" And he spun one of his programmes into the pit, and waved another towards the gallery.