told her, incredulous that she could be so lacking in information. “That’s because these boys will buy boxes for opening night and come back to see the show all during its run. If he’s got real money, maybe he can be loosened up enough to finance a separate show, starring, of course, the girl he’s interested in. Mimi dear, you really must brush up on these things you don’t want people going around saying: ‘She’s pretty but so naive!’ Get yourself a teacher—as a matter of fact, I might be able to squeeze you into my private class,” Bert ended, with a chuckle that agitated his rotund little body like a red rubber ball that’s been bounced on the floor, Mimi thought. “Thank goodness, there’s dinner. I hope Horace trots out some of that Moet et Chandon—I could drink a gallon,” Bert added cheerfully as dinner was announced.
At Mimi’s right sat a banker from a town in Iowa the name of which she had never heard who talked, when he did cease momentarily giving his attention to his food, of mortgages and balances and the Follies which he had attended the night before. “And just