'It is heartbreaking to see her in tragedy,' said Pinchas, burning his boats. 'She skips and jumps. Rather would I give Ophelia to one of your kangaroos!'
'You low-down monkey!' Goldwater almost flung his brush into the poet's face. 'You compare my wife to a kangaroo! Take your filthy manuscript and begone where the pepper grows.'
'Well, Fanny would be rather funny as Ophelia,' put in Kloot pacifyingly.
'And to make your wife ridiculous as Ophelia,' added Pinchas eagerly, 'you would rob the world of your Hamlet!'
'I can get plenty of Hamlets. Any scribbler can translate Shakespeare.'
'Perhaps, but who can surpass Shakespeare? Who can make him intelligible to the modern soul?'
'Mr. Goldwater,' cried the call-boy, with the patness of a reply.
The irate manager bustled out, not sorry to escape with his dignity and so cheap a masterpiece. Kloot was left, with swinging legs, dominating the situation. In idle curiosity and with the simplicity of perfectly bad manners, he took up the poet's papers and letters and perused them. As there were scraps of verse amid the mass, Pinchas let him read on unrebuked.
'You will talk to him, Kloot,' he pleaded at last. 'You will save Ophelia?'
The big-nosed youth looked up from his impertinent inquisition. 'Rely on me, if I have to play her myself.'