Sam shook his head and began talking to Thurley about Polly. “She is irrepressible, isn’t she? Fancies she can out-Wagner Wagner—when she is just bound to end up by writing songs for a ballad singer—one dressed in sheer muslin with velvet wrist bows—possessing a thin, carefully tutored soprano that will always trill certain words.”
Polly picked up a cushion and unceremoniously pitched it towards him. It fell between Thurley and Sam and Sam knelt gracefully upon it, adding, “Would that I could have one of these when I’m trying to look romantic in this position before a matinée of school girls—ugh, the old bones do make a howl if I use them carelessly! Thurley, don’t mind us! You see I’m one of those old-young boys that just stay old-young to the finish—always wearing a gardenia in their buttonhole and their hat tilted rakishly over the left eye. Some day I’ll just go to sleep and I’ll be toted to the Little Church Around the Corner with a last gardenia in my buttonhole and I hope some friend of mine will protest against that awful firebell embellished funeral march. At least I’m entitled to have the Faust waltz played—I always have my greatest luck with stage proposals when that is softly heard as coming from the supposed supper room of a hunt ball—and a bill poster without saying, ‘The End of an Old Beau!’ After it is all over, I hope they’ll say, ‘Well, Sam never grew old while he was among us—let’s hope he won’t start the habit now wherever he’s blown off to!’”
He jumped up as he finished, holding out his hand, and Thurley took it shyly.
“Don’t mind our nonsense—she’s quite timid, isn’t she? Reminds me of the way my leading ladies act when on the stage and when off they rage like a stable boy if some one happens to cross their notions.” He studied her a moment longer and remarked, “She is pretty—I can’t find a single flaw.”
Thurley was pretty that afternoon; perhaps the ooze had lent her the vivid coloring or it was her bright red coat with the great silver buttons and the ermine tam slanting down and showing her dark hair.
“I’m stupid,” she began, “because I’ve been working so hard.”
Sam settled himself on a sofa to take in the surroundings. Polly was watching something out of the window so Thurley took opportunity to remove her wraps and come to sit sedately beside the famous old man.
“But I’m not really timid,” she supplemented naïvely, at which he turned about crying bravo, and threatening Hobart with losing his prima donna in order that she become Sam Sparling’s leading lady.
“She’s taking inventory of my wrinkles, Polly,” he complained, “and my white hair and the wretched old hump o’ years that has fastened itself on my back. Bring her to the Christmas matinée and let her see me in lavender-striped trousers and cutaway coat, the misunderstood young man turned from his father’s mansion, returning in the last act to his steam yacht and his second best Rolls Royce—let her have a go at me and come behind to have tea afterwards,” he put his hand down and covered Thurley’s—a thin, tired hand with prominent, blue veins and a handsome ring of sapphires on the little finger.
“Haven’t you a good sort of leading woman?” asked Polly.