A Gold Slipper

Marshall McKann followed his wife and her friend Mrs. Post down the
aisle and up the steps to the stage of the Carnegie Music Hall with an
ill-concealed feeling of grievance. Heaven knew he never went to
concerts, and to be mounted upon the stage in this fashion, as if he were
a "highbrow" from Sewickley, or some unfortunate with a musical wife, was
ludicrous. A man went to concerts when he was courting, while he was a
junior partner. When he became a person of substance he stopped that sort
of nonsense. His wife, too, was a sensible person, the daughter of an old
Pittsburgh family as solid and well-rooted as the McKanns. She would
never have bothered him about this concert had not the meddlesome Mrs.
Post arrived to pay her a visit. Mrs. Post was an old school friend of
Mrs. McKann, and because she lived in Cincinnati she was always keeping
up with the world and talking about things in which no one else was
interested, music among them. She was an aggressive lady, with weighty
opinions, and a deep voice like a jovial bassoon. She had arrived only
last night, and at dinner she brought it out that she could on no account
miss Kitty Ayrshire's recital; it was, she said, the sort of thing no one
could afford to miss.

When McKann went into town in the morning he found that every seat in the
music-hall was sold. He telephoned his wife to that effect, and, thinking
he had settled the matter, made his reservation on the 11.25 train for
New York. He was unable to get a drawing-room because this same Kitty
Ayrshire had taken the last one. He had not intended going to New York
until the following week, but he preferred to be absent during Mrs.
Post's incumbency.

In the middle of the morning, when he was deep in his correspondence,
his wife called him up to say the enterprising Mrs. Post had telephoned
some musical friends in Sewickley and had found that two hundred
folding-chairs were to be placed on the stage of the concert-hall, behind
the piano, and that they would be on sale at noon. Would he please get
seats in the front row? McKann asked if they would not excuse him, since
he was going over to New York on the late train, would be tired, and
would not have time to dress, etc. No, not at all. It would be foolish
for two women to trail up to the stage unattended. Mrs. Post's husband
always accompanied her to concerts, and she expected that much attention
from her host. He needn't dress, and he could take a taxi from the
concert-hall to the East Liberty station.

The outcome of it all was that, though his bag was at the station, here
was McKann, in the worst possible humour, facing the large audience to
which he was well known, and sitting among a lot of music students and
excitable old maids.