Kloot broke in impishly: 'It is very good of you to give us a month of your valuable time.'
But Goldwater was too irate for irony. 'A month!' he gasped at last. 'I could put on six melodramas in a month.'
'But "Hamlet" is not a melodrama!' said Pinchas, shocked.
'Quite so; there is not half the scenery. It's the scenery that takes time rehearsing, not the scenes.'
The poet was now as purple as the player. 'You would profane my divine work by gabbling through it with your pack of parrots!'
'Here, just you come off your perch!' said Kloot. 'You've written the piece; we do the rest.' Kloot, though only nineteen and at a few dollars a week, had a fine, careless equality not only with the whole world, but even with his employer. He was now, to his amaze, confronted by a superior.
'Silence, impudent-face! You are not talking to Radsikoff. I am a Poet, and I demand my rights.'
Kloot was silent from sheer surprise.
Goldwater was similarly impressed. 'What rights?' he observed more mildly. 'You've had your twenty dollars. And that was too much.'
'Too much! Twenty dollars for the masterpiece of the twentieth century!'