Perkins (wish a laugh). Made a scene, eh?
Barlow (joining in the laugh). Who wouldn’t? Each time I stepped on his foot he glared—regular Macbeth stare—like this: “Is this a jagger which I see before me?” (Suits action to word.) But I never let on I saw, but continued to rehearse. When the lurch came, however, and I toppled over on top of him, grabbed his shoulders in my hands to keep from sprawling in his lap, and hissed “villanous viper” in his face, he was inclined to resent it forcibly.
Yardsley. I don’t blame him. Seems to me a man of your intelligence ought to know better than to rehearse on a cable-car, anyhow, to say nothing of stepping on a man’s corns.
Barlow. Of course I apologized; but he was a persistent old codger, and demanded an explanation of my epithet.
Perkins. It’s a wonder he didn’t have you put off. A man doesn’t like to be insulted even if he does ride on the cable.
Barlow. Oh, I appeased him. I told him I was rehearsing. That I was an amateur actor.
Mrs. Perkins. And of course he was satisfied.
Barlow. Yes; at least I judge so. He said that my confession was humiliation enough, without his announcing to the public what he thought I was; and he added, to the man next him, that he thought the public was exposed to enough danger on the cable cars without having lunatics thrust upon them at every turning.
Perkins. He must have been a bright old man.
Mrs. Perkins. Or a very crabbed old person.