"I told you before, kid, Vivian Haig goes with the Rudolph Number Two Company next month to play the same part as she does now; and you know as well as I do it ain't no better than walking on and off in the second act—that's all."
"Then you'd oughter learn her to walk, Mont," Miss Raymond said as she rose from her chair. "She fell all over herself last night."
"I know it," Fieldstone said, without shifting from his desk. "She ain't got nothing to do and she can't do that!"
Miss Raymond attempted what a professional producer had told her was a bitter laugh. It turned out to be a snort.
"Well, I can't stay here all day talking about people like Haig," she announced. "I got a date with my dressmaker in a quarter of an hour."
"All right, Goldie," Fieldstone said, still seated. "Take care of yourself, kid, and I'll see you after the show to-night."
He watched her as she disappeared through the doorway and sighed heavily—but not for love, because the domestic habits of a lifetime in the waist business are not to be so easily overcome. Indeed, theatrical beauty, with all its allurements, reposed in Fieldstone's office as free from temptation to the occupant as thousand dollar bills in a paying-teller's cage.
What if he did call Miss Goldie Raymond "kid"? He meant nothing by it. In common with all other theatrical managers he meant nothing by anything he ever said to actors or playwrights, unless it appeared afterward that he ought to have meant it and would stand to lose money by not meaning it.
The telephone bell rang and he lifted the receiver from its hook.
"Who d'ye say?" he said after a pause. "Well, see if Raymond is gone down the elevator, and if it's all right tell her I'll see her."