"'Artistic success!'" said Sherrington, emphatically; "why, there's money in this thing of yours—big money, too, if we can get all the laughs out of those two scenes of Daisy's in the second act. But it will take good work to get out all the laughs there ought to be, legitimately—and we've got to do it! Every laugh is worth a dollar and a half; that's what I say."
"The two scenes in the second act?" inquired Carpenter. "The one with Stark and the one with Miss Marvin, you mean?"
"The one with Marvin will be all right, I think," said the stage-manager.
"I'm not so sure of that," Harry Brackett interjected; "you insisted on her being engaged, Will, but she is very inexperienced, and I don't know how she'll get through that long scene."
"Miss Marvin is very clever," Carpenter declared, eager to defend the girl he was in love with; "and she will look the part to perfection!"
"Looking is all very well," Brackett responded, "but it is acting she will have to do in that scene in the second act."
"And she will do it too," asserted the stage-manager. "You see, she's got her mother here to-night, and there isn't a sharper old stager anywhere than Kate Shannon Loraine."
"That's so," Harry Brackett admitted; "I suppose Loraine can show her daughter how to get out of that scene all there is in it."
"Shannon'll see the whole play to-night," said Sherrington, "and she'll be able to give Marvin lots of pointers to-morrow. The little girl will be all right; it's Daisy I'm more afraid of in that scene. It ought to be played high comedy, 'Lady Teazle,' way up in G—and high comedy isn't altogether in Daisy's line."
"That can't be helped now," Brackett replied; "and if the Stellar Attraction can't reach that scene it's the Stellar Attraction's own fault, isn't it? You remember, Will, how she kept telling us all the time we were writing the play that she wanted as high-toned a part as we could give her. We gave it to her, and now she's just got to stretch up to it, if she can."