In the dressing-room behind the stage she was introduced to the secretary of the Society, Mr. Fitzpatrick.  She smiled and shook his hand.  He was a little man, with a white, vacant face.  She noticed that he wore his soft brown hat carelessly on the side of his head and that his accent was flat.  He held a programme in his hand, and, while he was talking to her, he chewed one end of it into a moist pulp.  He seemed to bear disappointments lightly.  Mr. Holohan came into the dressingroom every few minutes with reports from the box- office.  The artistes talked among themselves nervously, glanced from time to time at the mirror and rolled and unrolled their music.  When it was nearly half-past eight, the few people in the hall began to express their desire to be entertained.  Mr. Fitzpatrick came in, smiled vacantly at the room, and said: 

“Well now, ladies and gentlemen.  I suppose we’d better open the ball.”

Mrs. Kearney rewarded his very flat final syllable with a quick stare of contempt, and then said to her daughter encouragingly: 

“Are you ready, dear?”

When she had an opportunity, she called Mr. Holohan aside and asked him to tell her what it meant.  Mr. Holohan did not know what it meant.  He said that the committee had made a mistake in arranging for four concerts:  four was too many.

“And the artistes!” said Mrs. Kearney.  “Of course they are doing their best, but really they are not good.”

Mr. Holohan admitted that the artistes were no good but the committee, he said, had decided to let the first three concerts go as they pleased and reserve all the talent for Saturday night.  Mrs. Kearney said nothing, but, as the mediocre items followed one another on the platform and the few people in the hall grew fewer and fewer, she began to regret that she had put herself to any expense for such a concert.  There was something she didn’t like in the look of things and Mr. Fitzpatrick’s vacant smile irritated her very much.  However, she said nothing and waited to see how it would end.  The concert expired shortly before ten, and everyone went home quickly.

The concert on Thursday night was better attended, but Mrs. Kearney saw at once that the house was filled with paper.  The audience behaved indecorously, as if the concert were an informal dress rehearsal.  Mr. Fitzpatrick seemed to enjoy himself; he was quite unconscious that Mrs. Kearney was taking angry note of his conduct.  He stood at the edge of the screen, from time to time jutting out his head and exchanging a laugh with two friends in the corner of the balcony.  In the course of the evening, Mrs. Kearney learned that the Friday concert was to be abandoned and that the committee was going to move heaven and earth to secure a bumper house on Saturday night.  When she heard this, she sought out Mr. Holohan.  She buttonholed him as he was limping out quickly with a glass of lemonade for a young lady and asked him was it true.  Yes. it was true.