"Trouble is, I'm afraid he's going to make himself a chanct—chance, that is."
"Aaaah," retorted Ivo, with prideful inarticulateness.
However, when at six-thirty that Friday, Paul fell over a wire stretched between the jambs of the doorway leading to his private bathroom and broke a leg, even Ivo was forced to admit that this did not look like an accident.
"Ivo," Paul wailed when the doctor had left, "what am I going to do? I refuse to let Gregory go on in my place tonight!"
"Y'gonna hafta," Ivo said, shifting his gum to the other side of his mouth. "He's y'unnastudy."
"But the doctor said it would be weeks before I can get around again. Either Gregory'll take over the part completely with his interpretation and I'll be left out in the cold, or more likely, he'll louse up the play and it'll fold before I'm on my feet."
"Y'gotta have more confidence in y'self, kid. The public ain't gonna forgetcha in a few weeks."
But Paul knew far better than the idealistic Ivo how fickle the public can be. However, he chose an argument that would appeal to the boy. "Don't forget, he booby-trapped me!"
"Cert'ny looks like it," Ivo was forced to concede. "But watcha gonna do? Y'can't prove it. 'Sides, the curtain's gonna gwup in a li'l over a nour—"
Paul gripped Ivo's sinewy wrist. "Ivo, you've got to go on for me!"