“If I were in your place, I’d take a gun and go forth and kill a few stiffs.”
“I always supposed a ‘stiff’ was dead. Didn’t know one could be killed over again.”
“Oh, you can joke if you want to, but I don’t see how you can feel like joking now. Anybody else would swear.”
“And that would be foolish.”
“Perhaps so; but you know, as well as I do, that your play was murdered and mangled last night.”
“That’s so, b’gosh!” drawled a doleful voice, and Ephraim Gallup, another of the company, Frank’s boy friend from Vermont, came stalking into the room, looking quite as disgusted and dejected as Hodge. “An’ I’m one of the murderers!”
Frank looked Ephraim over and burst out laughing.
“Why,” he cried, “your face is so long that you’ll be hitting your toes against your chin when you walk, if you’re not careful.”
“Whut I need is somebuddy to hit their toes against my pants jest where I set down, an’ do it real hard,” said Ephraim. “I wisht I’d stayed to hum on the farm when I went back there and giv up the idee that I was an actor. I kin dig ’taters an’ saw wood a darn sight better’n I kin act!”
“You’re all right, Ephraim,” assured Merry. “You had to fill that part in a hurry, and you were not sure on your lines. That worried you and broke you up. If you had been sure of your lines, so that you would have felt easy, I don’t think there would have been any trouble as far as you were concerned.”