Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/132

120 companies which wander through the West, not daring to measure their talents with the Eastern stars, generally can count on a profitable season by the Golden Gate. Bad scenery, absurd costumes, and indifferent acting do not damp the ardor of the Californian, who will go anywhere and undergo any small discomfort to hear passable singing.

Mrs. Gault, who went every year or two to New York and found her ideas there, as she did her hats and dresses, derided the local taste for hearing unknown prima donnas as Leonora and Gilda. But her husband and Letitia overruled her in at least this one particular, and when opera came up from Mexico or across from New Orleans, she always went with them, and tried to look as bored as her animated features and lively style would permit.

This particular season, a short one of three weeks given by an Italian company that had been touring Mexico during the winter, opened with a performance of "Rigoletto." For the first night Mortimer Gault procured one of the lower boxes, leaving it to his wife to fill it with such company as she desired, provided a seat was left for him in the background, where he could hear and would not have to talk. The party, which consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Gault, Letitia, John, Tod McCormick, and his sister Pearl, was late in arriving, and it was not until the