The renewed warmth of their wet feet on the red-tile floor, the scent of fried oysters, the din of “Any Little Girl” on the piano, these added color to this moment of Mr. Wrenn’s great resolve. The four stared at one another excitedly. Mr. Wrenn’s eyelids fluttered. Tom brought his hand down on the table with a soft flat “plob” and declared: “Say, there might be a lot of money in it. Why, I’ve heard that Harry Smith—writes the words for these musical comedies—makes a _mint_ of money.”
“Mr. Poppins ought to help you in it—he’s seen such a lot of plays,” Mrs. Arty anxiously advised.
“That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Wrenn. It had, apparently, been ordained that he was to write it. They were now settling important details. So when Nelly cried, “I think it’s just a fine idea; I knew you had lots of imagination,” Tom interrupted her with:
“No; you write it, Bill. I’ll help you all I can, of course…. Tell you what you ought to do: get hold of Teddem—he’s had a lot of stage experience; he’d help you about seeing the managers. That ’d be the hard part—you can write it, all right, but you’d have to get next to the guys on the inside, and Teddem—Say, you cer_tain_ly ought to write this thing, Bill. Might make a lot of money.”
“Heard about a fellow,” continued Tom—” fellow named Gene Wolf, I think it was—that was so broke he was sleeping in Bryant Park, and he made a _hundred thousand dollars_ on his first play—or, no; tell you how it was: he sold it outright for ten thousand—something like that, anyway. I got that right from a fellow that’s met him.”
“Still, an author’s got to go to college and stuff like that.” Mr. Wrenn spoke as though he would be pleased to have the objection overruled at once, which it was with a universal:
Crunching oysters in a brown jacket of flour, whose every lump was a crisp delight, hearing his genius lauded and himself called Bill thrice in a quarter-hour, Mr. Wrenn was beatified. He asked the waiter for some paper, and while the four hotly discussed things which “it would be slick to have the president’s daughter do” he drew up a list of characters on a sheet of paper he still keeps. It is headed, “Miggleton’s Forty-second Street Branch.” At the bottom appear numerous scribblings of the name Nelly.