"They're on strike!"
"It's not," said Mr. Miller austerely, "what they like, it's what they're paid for. They ought to be on stage. We should be ringing up in two minutes."
The stage-director drew another breath, then thought better of it. He had a wife and children, and, if dadda went under with apoplexy, what became of the home, civilization's most sacred product? He relaxed the muscles of his diaphragm, and reached for pencil and paper.
Mr. Miller inspected the message, felt for his spectacle-case, found it, opened it, took out his glasses, replaced the spectacle-case, felt for his handkerchief, polished the glasses, replaced the handkerchief, put the glasses on, and read. A blank look came into his face.
"Why?" he enquired.
The stage-director, with a nod of the head intended to imply that he must be patient and all would come right in the future, recovered the paper, and scribbled another sentence. Mr. Miller perused it.
"Because Mae D'Arcy has got her notice?" he queried, amazed. "But the girl can't dance a step."
The stage-director, by means of a wave of the hand, a lifting of both eyebrows, and a wrinkling of the nose, replied that the situation, unreasonable as it might appear to the thinking man, was as he had stated and must be faced. What, he enquired—through the medium of a clever drooping of the mouth and a shrug of the shoulders—was to be done about it?
Mr. Miller remained for a moment in meditation.
"I'll go and talk to them," he said.