" When
"off-stage" the performers, mostly girls, drank with the audience in a
tier of curtained boxes which lined the sides of the auditorium. At
intervals the curtains parted for a moment and faces peered down. A
drunken sailor in a forward box was tossing silver coins to a dancer.
They made their exit, Francisco frankly weary and the young reporter
bored by the unrelieved crudity of it all. A smart equipage, with
champing horses, stood before the entrance. They paused to glance at it.
"Looks like Harry Bear's carriage," Frank commented. "You know the young
society blood who's had so many larks." He turned back. "Wait a minute,
father, I'm going in. If Bear has a party upstairs in those boxes it'll
make good copy."
"It'll make a scandal, you mean," returned Francisco rather crisply.
"You can't print the women's names."
"Bosh!" the younger man retorted pertly. "Everyone's doing this sort of
thing now. Come along, dad. See the fun." He caught his father's arm and
they re-entered, taking the stairs, this time, to the boxes above. From
one came a man's laughing banter. "That's he," Frank whispered, Hastily
he drew his half reluctant father into a vacant box.
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