"Lord! you don't need to. I know everything about him there is to know. A fine, hefty truck horse trying to do teamwork with a red-nostriled filly."
"I—I think that's it—I've never been able to get it across to anyone before, but—"
"He was just cast wrong. That's all there is to be said against the chap. Right?"
"Exactly."
"I understand. In a way I'm in a similar position with my own brother. Only, I've stuck it out because it was my mother's great wish to see us get on together. After what you have observed these years, particularly to-day, none of this can be particularly new to you."
"I've noticed, of course, you—you're different."
"It is the little things about Robert I cannot swallow. Never could. He is the better business man and keeps my head out of the clouds, but many a time I've wanted to duck these years of apprenticeship and produce the things I believe in. I will some day, but that is another story. Robert has vision. His sense of land and theater values is unfailing. He—"
"Well, so is your vision just as unfailing in your work. The chain didn't even begin to form before you took over the booking end."
"He has fine traits, too. Big ones. His word is his bond. He has business foresight and integrity, but somehow it is his little meannesses. I remember once in my father's house he took a thrashing for something outrageous he was not guilty of, because he had promised some youngster across the way he would shield him, come what might, and somehow I thought it pretty fine of him. But another time he let me take a thrashing for something he had done and stood by without opening his mouth. It is those indescribable smallnesses in his make-up. Once when I was in favor of branching out and producing a legitimate three-act play which I happened to run across—a rare thing from the French—he—well, I won't go into it—but this thing—to-night—that bauble of my mother's—it—it's the climax of a lifetime of such flea bites—a trifle hardly worth the mentioning, and yet—it's the most utter—the most damnable—"
There was a half crash of his clenched hand among the silver and a rise of suffusing red up out of the white of his soft collar.