"Say, you may be a smart man, Rudolph Pelz—everybody tells me you are—but they should know once on the Picture Rialto how dumb as a father you are. 'Noticed?' he asks. All right then—if you need a brick house—noticed that David Feist hates your daughter and 'ain't got eyes for her and don't try every excuse to get invited here for sup—dinner."
"You mean, Rosie—"
"Of course I mean! It's pitiful how he follows her everywhere with his eyes. In the box last night at the opera you was too asleep to see it, but all evening Etta was nudging me how he nearly ate up our Bleema just with looks."
"You women with your nonsense!"
"I guess, Rudolph, it would be a bad thing. Our daughter and a young man smart enough to make himself from a celluloid collar-cutter to a millionaire five times over on a little thing like inventing a newfangled film-substance should tie up with the only child of Rudolph Pelz, the picture king."
"I give you my word, Rosie, such talk makes me sick."
"You'd hate it, wouldn't you? A prince like David Feist."
"People don't talk such things till they happen. If our daughter could have the King of England and didn't want him, I'd say she should not marry the King of England. I want my girl home by me yet, anyway, for many a long day. She should be playing with her dolls instead of her mother and aunt Etta filling her up with ideas. Don't think I'm so stuck, neither, on how she runs around with my film stars."
"Honest, Roody, the way you're so strict with that child it's a shame!
The girl has got to have her pleasure."
"Well, if she's got to have her pleasure, she should have it with young men like Feist and not with—"