"No."
"I wonder what you'd do under the direction of a man you happened to like?"
"I don't know." Joan gave him a sullen look. "Will you please let me pass."
"Delighted." He moved aside with mocking courtesy. "I ask only one thing of you: don't fall in love with me before our first night. I haven't got time to sour another sweet young thing's amiable disposition.... Keep on hating me as hard as you like—and we'll make at least a half-portion actress of you yet...."
Toward the end of the second week, Joan began to notice that Rideout was growing less assiduous in attendance. At first inclined to lay this to his satisfaction with the progress—to her the production seemed to be taking on form and colour in a way to wonder at—she later overheard a chance remark of one of her associates, to the effect that Rideout was himself rehearsing with another company.
"Well," someone commented, "if it was my coin back of this show, I'd stick by it if I had to play the office-boy."
"I guess," was the reply, "Rideout ain't got any too much outside what he's sunk in this production. Shouldn't wonder if he needs what he's to get with Minnie Aspen."
"Mebbe. He's a good trouper. What does he drag down, anyway?"
"Four hundred a week."
"Nix with those Lambs' Club figures. I mean regular money."