"You've read it—you remember it?"
"Oh, I know it by heart—my part of it. You see, he wouldn't keep away from me while he was thinking of it. He kept consulting me about everything in it. In a way, we worked over it together."
The little man looked at me, slowly closing one eye. It is a habit of his when he's going to do something particularly nasty.
"Then, in a way, as you say, it is part yours."
"Hardly! Imagine Nance Olden writing a line of a play!"
"Still you—collaborated; that's the word. I say, my dear, if I could read that comedy, and it was—half what you say it is, I might—I don't promise, mind—but I might let you have the part that was written for you and put the thing on. Has he drilled you any, eh? He was the best stage-manager we ever had before he got the notion of managing for himself—and ruining himself."
"Well, he's all that yet. Of course, he has told me, and we agreed how the thing should be done. As he'd write, you know, he'd read the thing over to me, and I—"
"Fine—fine! A reading from that fool Obermuller would be enough to open the eyes of a clever woman. I'd like to read that comedy—yes?"
"But Obermuller would never—"
"But Olden might—"