“The Legitimists? My dear Archie, you don’t surely expect me to believe that you possess sufficient political power to influence the fortunes of a French dynasty.”
“French dynasty be grilled. I said the Legitimists—the actors, the carpenters, the gasmen, the firemen, the check-takers, Shakespeare, and Mrs. Mowbray of the Legitimate Theatre. I’ve fired out the lot of them, and be hanged to them!”
“Oh, I see; you’ve fired out Shakespeare?”
“He’s eternally fired out, so far as I’m concerned. Why should I end my days in a workhouse because a chap wrote plays a couple of hundred years ago—may be more?”
“Why, indeed? And so you fired him out?”
“I’ve made things hum at the Legitimate this morning”—Archie had once spent three months in the United States—“and now I’ve made the lot of them git. I’ve made W. S. git.”
“And Mrs. Mowbray?”
“She gits too.”
“She’ll do it gracefully. Archie, my man, you’re not wanting in courage.”
“What courage was there needed for that?”—Archie had picked up a quill pen and was trying, but with indifferent success, to balance it on the toe of his boot, as he leant back in a chair. “What courage is needed to tell a chap that’s got hold of your watch chain that the time has come for him to drop it? Great Godfrey! wasn’t I the master of the lot of them? Do you fancy that the manager was my master? Do you fancy that Mrs. Mowbray was my—I mean, do you think that I’m quite an ass?”