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happened?”
    “Nothing happened per se,” said Peg. “It’sjust a lackluster show, but it’s nothing to lose sleep over. It’s always been lackluster. Nobody in the audience seemed unduly harmed by it. They all left the theater with the use of their legs. Anyway, we’re changing the show next week, so it doesn’t matter.”
    “And the box office receipts? For the early show?”
    “The less we speak of such matters the better,” said Peg.
    “But what was the take,Peg?”
    “Don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answers to, Olive.”
    “Well, I will need to know. We can’t keep having crowds like tonight.”
    “Oh, how I love that you call it a crowd! By actual count, there were forty-seven people at the early show this evening.”
    “Peg! That’s not enough !”
    “Don’t grieve, Olive. Things always get slower in the summer, remember. Anyway, we get the audienceswe get. If we wanted to draw larger crowds, we would put on baseball games instead of plays. Or we would invest in air-conditioning. Let’s just turn our attention now toward getting the South Seas act ready for next week. We can get thedancers rehearsing tomorrow morning, and they can be up and running by Tuesday.”
    “Not tomorrow morning,” said Olive. “I’ve rented the stage out to a children’sdance class.”
    “Good for you. Resourceful as ever, old girl. Tomorrow afternoon, then.”
    “Not tomorrow afternoon. I’ve rented the stage out for a swimming class.”
    This caught Peg up short. “A swimming class? Come again?”
    “It’s a program that the city is offering. They’ll be teaching children from the neighborhood how to swim.”
    “To swim ? Will they be flooding our stage, Olive?”
    “Of course not.It’s called dry swimming. They teach the classes without water.”
    “Do you mean to tell me that they will teach swimming as a theoretical concept ?”
    “More or less so. Just the basics. They use chairs. The city is paying for it.”
    “How about this, Olive. How about you tell Gladys when you haven’t rented our stage out to a children’s dance class, or to a dry swimming school, and then she can calla rehearsal to begin working on the dances for the South Seas act?”
    “Monday afternoon,” said Olive.
    “Monday afternoon, Gladys!” Peg called over to the showgirl. “Did you hear that? Can you gather everyone together for Monday afternoon?”
    “I don’t like rehearsing in the mornings, anyhow,” said Gladys, although I wasn’t sure this constituted a firm reply.
    “It shouldn’t be hard, Gladdie,” saidPeg. “It’s just a scratch revue. Throw something together, the way you do.”
    “I want to be in the South Seas show!” said Roland.
    “Everyone wants to be in the South Seas show,” said Peg. “The kidslove performing in these exotic international dramas, Vivvie. They love the costumes. This year alone, we’ve had an Indian show, a Chinese maiden story, and a Spanish dancer story. We tried an Eskimoromance last year, but it was no good. The costumes weren’t very becoming, to say the least. Fur, you know. Heavy. And the songs were not our best. We ended up rhyming ‘nice’ with ‘ice’ so many times, it made your head ache.”
    “You can play one of the hula girls in the South Seas show, Roland!” Gladys said, and laughed.
    “I sure am pretty enough for it!” he said, and struck a pose.
    “You sureare,” agreed Gladys. “And you’re so tiny, one of these days you’re just gonna float away. I always gotta be careful not to put you right next to me on the stage. Standing next to you, I look like a great big cow.”
    “That could be because you’ve gained weight lately, Gladys,” observed Olive. “You need to monitor what you eat, or soon you won’t fit into your costumes at all.”
    “What a person eatsdoesn’t have anything to do with her figure!” Gladys protested, as she reached for another piece of meat loaf. “I read it in a magazine. What matters