"Well, then, there you are with your experience. And as for the wardrobe—my goodness, lad, what do you want more than those swell tweeds of yours, and the dress suit you've got on? If it comes to costoom parts, why, the management will just have to fit you out with some of their own glad rags—or make the ghost walk your way in advance."
"You don't seem to think much of your star's company, if you believe a raw amateur, with hardly a stitch to his back, would be good enough for them," Loveland said.
"I don't claim it's a Noo York Company," explained Bill. "I guess they're doin' the barn-storming act. Perhaps I've been kind of carried away, thinkin' of Lillie, and what it would be to get the news of her from a chum. I don't suppose there's much in this for you. Maybe you'll do better at Alexander's, now you're a kind of star yourself——"
"A fallen star," laughed Loveland. "Look at me, and see the marks I got sliding down the sky."
Then, for the first time, Bill noticed that his friend's hair was singed and his face reddened on one side, his white shirt covered with black spots, and his left hand partly in, partly out of, a clumsily made bandage.
"Moses! But you have been through the wars!" exclaimed Bill. And he listened with growing excitement to Loveland's version of the fire.
"Alexander ought to give you a partnership," he commented at last, though Val had made no boast of his own part in the affair.
"He's chucked me," said Loveland.
"Je—rusalem! Why, in the name of all that's decent?"
"It was in the name of everything indecent—'villain, cheat, liar, coward'—that he did it. According to him I was all those, and ought to be in prison; though what he meant by his weird accusations, I can't imagine, unless he just hit on whatever came first. I suppose it must have been that. He thought I'd been making love to his daughter."