"Sixty miles to town if it's an inch! How—cosy," mused young Kennilworth.
"Good-bye!" shouted everybody.
"Good-bye!" waved Ann Woltor and my Husband.
As for Rollins, he was almost beside himself with pride and triumph. Shuffling joyously from one foot to the other he crowded to the very edge of the vestibule and with his small fussy face turned up ecstatically to the rain, fairly exploded into speech the instant the car was out of earshot.
"She'll look better!" gloated Rollins.
"Who?—the car?" deprecated young Kennilworth.
Then, because everybody laughed out at nothing, it gave me a very good chance suddenly to laugh out at "nothing" myself. And most certainly I had been needing that chance very badly for at least the last fifteen minutes. Because really when you once stopped to consider the whole thrilling scheme of this "Rainy Week" Play, and how you and your Husband for years and years had constituted yourself a very eager, earnest-minded Audience-of-Two to watch how the Lord Almighty,—the one unhampered Dramatist of the world, would work out the scenes and colors—the exits and entrances—the plots and counter plots of the material at hand—it was just a bit astonishing to have your Husband jump up from his place in the audience and leap to the stage to be one of the players instead!
It wasn't at all that the dereliction worried your head or troubled your heart. But it left your elbow so lonely! Who was there left for your elbow to nudge? When the morning curtain rose on a flight of sea gulls slashing like white knives through a sheet of silver rain, or the Night Scene set itself in a plushy black fog that fairly crinkled your senses; when the Leading Lady's eyes narrowed for the first time to the Leading Man's startled stare, and the song you had introduced so casually at the last moment in the last act proved to be the reforming point in the Villain's nefarious career, and the one character you had picked for "Comic Relief" turned out to be the Tragedienne, who in the world was left for your elbow to nudge?
Swinging back to the breakfast-room I heard the clock strike ten—only ten?
It was going to be a nice little Play all right! Starting off already with several quite unexpected situations! And it wouldn't be the first time by any means that in an emergency I had been obliged to "double" as prompter and stage hand or water carrier and critic. But how to double as elbow-nudger I couldn't quite figure.