"How'd you come to lose your job?"
"Mr. Winter insulted me—one of the floor-walkers—if you've got to know."
Thursby's head wagged heavily while he weighed this information, and he regarded his daughter with a baleful, morose glare, his fat hands trembling.
"What did you say to this man, Winter?" he asked presently.
"Told him I'd slap his face if he tried anything like that on me again. So he reported me up to the management—lied about me—and I got fired."
There was a long silence, through which Thursby pondered the matter, his thick lips moving inaudibly, while Joan sat upright, maintaining her attitude of independence and defiance, and Butch, grinning lazily, as if at some private jest, manufactured ring after ring of smoke in the still, close air.
Before her father spoke again, Joan became cognizant of Edna and her mother, like twin ghosts in their night-dresses, stealing silently, barefooted, to listen just within the door of the adjoining bedroom.
"And what do you propose to do now?" asked Thursby at length, lifting his weary, haunted gaze to his daughter's face. "What's this about your going on the stage?"
Joan set her jaw firmly. "That's what I'm going to do."
Thursby shook his head with decision. "I won't have it," he said.