"Did you ever get a chance to speak to one?"
"Now and then."
"Were they very haughty?"
"Not all of them."
"Well, as you've seen them you'll know just how to act, and you look real swell. This is an exciting play, ain't it? And my! how it does makes us all work. This is my only quiet time, and I guess you're tired. Perhaps you'd rather watch Jack Jacobus's big scene than talk to me? I have to go on, anyhow, in about four minutes."
"I'd rather talk to you than watch, if you'll let me," said Val.
"Well, as long as you don't make yourself too interesting, so I miss my cue! J. J. will be cross if he sees us whispering here, but he's too taken up with himself and his wife in this scene to notice much."
"That's lucky, because I have a message for you from an old friend of yours, that I've been wanting to tell you all day," Loveland began hastily, not to waste one of the four minutes. "I wonder if you remember him? Bill Willing?"
"Bill Willing!—a friend of yours?" the girl spoke sharply, in her surprise.
"Then you haven't forgotten him."