done the work equally well for half the
money, but, like most managers, Mr. Goble had the mental processes of
a sheep. "Follow the Girl" was the last outstanding musical success in
New York theatrical history: Wally had written it, therefore nobody
but Wally was capable of re-writing "The Rose of America." The thing
had for Mr. Goble the inevitability of Fate. Except for deciding
mentally that Wally had swelled head, there was nothing to be done.

Having decided that Wally had swelled head, and not feeling much
better, Mr. Goble concentrated his attention on the stage. A good deal
of action had taken place there during the recently concluded
business talk, and the unfortunate Lord Finchley was back again,
playing another of his scenes. Mr. Goble glared at Lord Finchley. He
did not like him, and he did not like the way he was speaking his
lines.

The part of Lord Finchley was a non-singing role. It was a type part.
Otis Pilkington had gone to the straight stage to find an artist, and
had secured the not uncelebrated Wentworth Hill, who had come over
from London to play in an English comedy which had just closed. The
newspapers had called the play thin, but had thought that Wentworth
Hill was an excellent comedian. Mr. Hill thought so, too, and it was
consequently a shock to his already disordered nerves when a bellow
from the auditorium stopped him in the middle of one of his speeches
and a rasping voice informed him that he was doing it all wrong.

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Hill, quietly but dangerously, stepping
to the footlights.

"All wrong!" repeated Mr. Goble.

"Really?" Wentworth Hill, who a few years earlier had spent several
terms at Oxford University before being sent down for aggravated
disorderliness, had brought little away with him from that seat of
learning except the Oxford manner. This he now employed upon Mr. Goble
with an icy severity which put the last touch to the manager's
fermenting state of mind. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me
just how you think that part should be played?"

Mr. Goble marched down the aisle.

"Speak out to the audience," he said, stationing himself by the
orchestra pit. "You're turning your head away all the darned time."

"I may be wrong," said Mr. Hill, "but I have played a certain amount,
don't you know, in pretty good companies, and I was always under the
impression that one should address one's remarks to the person one was
speaking to, not delive