“There you go again!” And Mr. Mott, eager to join old pals at their fishing, sniggered past, leaving a reek of hair-oil.
“Poor chap!” sighed Tony. “But there’s always hope for a man whose wife won’t call in a doctor.”
Will laughed, and cunningly took advantage of all this expansive geniality to escape from the room and the threatened transaction and to call from the doorstep as he took his farewell, “Then it’s settled—_I_ get the horse.”
“If you bring it into the partnership,” cried Tony after him, “not otherwise.”
Will found himself waylaid by Polly as he passed her doorway. She beckoned him within with a mysterious, masterful forefinger, and he, seeing the moreen curtains of her four-poster discreetly drawn, entered, though not without Puritan misgivings. She drew another curtain over the closed door communicating with her father’s room, and turned the key. “Don’t waste my cigar,” she said as he held it behind him. “I can see pa’s given you one of mine.” And taking up her glowing fag-end from the ash-tray, she resumed her suction of it, sipping in the intervals at a glass of milk. “I suppose you won’t share my drink,” she said simply.
“No, thank you,” he said, hardly believing his eyes, though he now understood whence came the clouds in which he had found her mantled. Perhaps she was really a man in disguise, despite her long ear-rings. But then, would ever a male take milk with his cigar? What with tobacco and horsiness, what was the sex coming to? And yet there seemed something symbolic in this combination of stimulants, this masculinity mitigated by milk! “What do you want to say to me?” he asked, keeping the front door open with his hand.
“What’s this about a partnership?” she said softly. “I couldn’t help hearing.”
“Don’t ask me,” said Will in tones hushed as cautiously. “Mr. Flippance did speak of it, but I’ve never thought of the theatre as a business, only as a spree.”
“Did he want you to take a theatre?” she asked anxiously.
Miss Flippance smiled sadly. “That’s his way of consoling himself. He’s dying to get a stock company again. But he _mustn’t_ have even a theatre for amateurs. I’d fight it tooth and nail.”
“It’s bad for _me_,” said Miss Flippance. She puffed out a cloud. “You see, there’d be no place for me. I can wipe most actresses off the stage, but I’m not pretty—at least, not since my illness—and the public won’t have me—except at the piano where I turn my back on them. Plain actresses must be heard and not seen.”