“Get out of the light!” bellowed Mr Goble, always a man of direct speech, adding “Damn you!” for good measure.
“Please move to one side,” interpreted the stage-director. “Mr Goble is looking at the set.”
The head carpenter, who completed the little group, said nothing. Stage carpenters always say nothing. Long association with fussy directors has taught them that the only policy to pursue on opening nights is to withdraw into the silence, wrap themselves up in it, and not emerge until the enemy has grown tired and gone off to worry somebody else.
“It don’t look right!” said Mr Goble, cocking his head on one side.
“I see what you mean, Mr Goble,” assented the stage-director obsequiously. “It has perhaps a little too much—er—not quite enough—yes, I see what you mean!”
“It’s too—damn—BLUE!” rasped Mr Goble, impatient of this vacillating criticism. “That’s what’s the matter with it.”
The head carpenter abandoned the silent policy of a lifetime. He felt impelled to utter. He was a man who, when not at the theatre, spent most of his time in bed, reading all-fiction magazines: but it so happened that once, last summer, he had actually seen the sky; and he considered that this entitled him to speak almost as a specialist on the subject.
“Ther sky is blue!” he observed huskily. “Yessir! I seen it!”
He passed into the silence again, and, to prevent a further lapse, stopped up his mouth with a piece of chewing-gum.
Mr Goble regarded the silver-tongued orator wrathfully. He was not accustomed to chatter-boxes arguing with him like this. He would probably have said something momentous and crushing, but at this point Jill intervened.