“You see what I mean?” said Claire, but she was wise enough not to say it to Sallie, who quite obviously neither wished nor intended to see.
Of course it was Mrs. Fazackerly who murmured, “Oh yes—how well you do it!” and then Claire sat down again, her insistent egoism satisfied for the moment.
“I should like to go through the whole of the first scene again,” said Bill Patch, looking harassed.
“We haven’t settled anything yet about Puppa’s Hessian boots,” one of the Kendals reproachfully observed.
“They come in later. Ivan Petruski Skivah will wear them. That’s Martyn. And I should like to know, if possible, whether you can undertake Abdul the Bulbul Ameer, Major Ambrey?”
“Dear me, haven’t you settled that yet?” Mrs. Kendal asked, in amicable surprise. “I should have thought the parts would have been settled long ago. We seem to be getting on very slowly, don’t we?”
I agreed with her and called upon Christopher to make up his mind. To my surprise, he did not utter the uncompromising refusal that I had expected. He only said that if Patch would take his oath not to ask him to sing anything by himself, or speak a single line, or do anything of that sort, he’d think about it.
“But Abdul is the chief character in the piece. I can’t very well make him deaf and dumb,” expostulated the author.
“Well, then, some other chap had better take it on. I should only make a mull of it.”
I heard Nancy Fazackerly softly protesting at this, and Christopher crossed over to the piano, where she had been patiently sitting all the afternoon.