He was well over his soup now, drinking in long draughts from the tip of his spoon.
"News! In A. E. Unger's office, a man don't get his nose far enough up from the ledger to even smell news."
"I see Goldfinch & Goetz failed."
"Could have told 'em they'd go under, trying to put on a spectacular show written in verse. That same show boiled down to good Forty-second Street lingo with some good shapes and a proposition like Alma Zitelle to lift it from poetry to punch has a world of money in it for somebody. A war spectacular show filled with sure-fire patriotic lines, a bunch of show-girl battalions, and a figure like Alma Zitelle's for the Goddess of Liberty—a world of money, I tell you!"
"Honest, Harry?"
"That trench scene they built for that show is as fine a contrivance as I've ever seen of the kind. What did they do? Set it to a lot of music without a hum or a ankle in it. A few classy nurses like the Mercy Militia Sextet, some live, grand-old-flag tunes by Harry Mordelle, and there's a half a million dollars in that show. Unger thinks I'm crazy when I try to get him interested, but I—"
"I got ninety in manual training to-day, pop."
"That's good, son. Little more of that stew, mother?"
"Unger isn't so smart, honey, he can't afford to take a tip off you once in a while: you've proved that to him."
"Yes, but go tell him so."