“Do I have to eat my egg?”
“Yes.”
If Magnolia was late, Andy was always later. He ate quickly and abstractedly. As he swallowed his coffee you could almost see his agile mind darting here and there, so that you wondered how his electric little body resisted following it as a lesser force follows a greater—up into the pilot house, down in the engine room, into the town, leaping ahead to the next landing; dickering with storekeepers for supplies. He was always the first to finish and was off at a quick trot, clawing the mutton-chop whiskers as he went.
Early or late, Julie and Steve came in together, Steve’s great height ludicrously bent to avoid the low rafters of the dining room. Julie and Steve were the character team—Julie usually cast as adventuress, older sister, foil for Elly, the ingénue. Julie was a natural and intuitive actress, probably the best in the company. Sometimes she watched Elly’s unintelligent work, heard her slovenly speech and her silly inflections, and a little contemptuous look would come into her face.
Steve played villains and could never have kept the job, even in that uncritical group, had it not been for Julie. He was very big and very fair, and almost entirely lacking in dramatic sense. A quiet gentle giant, he always seemed almost grotesquely miscast, his blondeur and his trusting faithful blue eyes belying the sable hirsuteness of villainy. Julie coached him patiently, tirelessly. The result was fairly satisfactory. But a nuance, an inflection, was beyond him.
“Who has a better right!” his line would be, perhaps. Schultzy, directing at rehearsal, would endeavour fruitlessly to convey to him its correct reading. After rehearsal, Julie could be heard going over the line again and again.
“Who has a better right!” Steve would thunder, dramatically.
“No, dear. The accent is on ‘better.’ Like this: ‘Who has a better right!’ ”
Steve’s blue eyes would be very earnest, his face red with effort. “Oh, I see. Come down hard on ‘better,’ huh? ‘Who has a better right!’ ”
It was useless.