"Louise's!" Unconsciously Laurie's face softened.
"Yes. I went to see her one day," Bangs explained, "and I mentioned that we couldn't get any work out of you till you'd had the adventure you were insisting on. Mrs. Ordway said, 'Well, why don't you give him an adventure?' That," confessed Rodney, "started me off."
"Obviously," corroborated his friend. "So it was Louise's idea. Poor Louise! I hope she got some fun out of it."
"You bet she did!" corroborated Bangs, eagerly. "I kept her posted every day. She said it was more fun than a play, and that it was keeping her alive."
"Humph! Well, go on. Tell me how it started." Laurie was smiling. If the little episode just ended had been, as it were, a bobolink singing to Louise Ordway during her final days on earth, it was not he who would find fault with the bird or with those who had set it singing.
"The day we saw the caretaker in the window across the park," continued Rodney, "and I realized how interested you were, it occurred to me that we'd engage that studio and put Miss Mayo into it. Miss Mayo lives in Richmond, Virginia, and she had been making a big hit in amateur theatricals. She wanted to get on the legitimate stage, as Shaw told you; so Mrs. Ordway suggested that Epstein and I try her out—"
"Never mind all that!" interrupted Laurie. "Perhaps later Miss Mayo will tell me about it herself."
Bangs accepted the snub without resentment.
"Epstein thought it was a corking idea," he went on, "especially as we expected to try out some of the scenes I have in mind for the new play. But the only one you let us really get over was the suicide scene in the first act. You balled up everything else we attempted," he ended with a sigh.
Laurie smiled happily.