"Everybody," he went on, "will be enraptured with it; they won't be able to help it; they're absolutely bound to be."
I wished I felt as certain of that as he did. Indeed I doubted so much if rapture would represent the state of mind of a certain gentleman that, in the daily letter which I always wrote to him, I never even hinted that I was engaged on a work of collaboration; though, for a time, that work filled my mind to the extinction of everything else.
"Now," continued my co-author, "the thing is to cast it, and, mind you, this will want casting, this will; no round pegs in square holes. We don't want to have a fine play spoilt by anyone incapable; everyone will have to be as good as we can get."
Although he spoke as if it would be a task of the most delicate kind--and, for my part, I did not see how, in the neighbourhood of West Marden, we were going to cast it at all; yet, in actual practice he seemed to me to make nothing of the matter. When he came with what he called the "proposed cast" I was really amazed.
"Do you seriously mean, Mr Spencer, that these are the people whom you suggest should act in our play?"
"Certainly. I've thought this thing out right to the bed-rock, and I assure you that we couldn't do better. Of course, you must remember that I shall do a good bit myself. I fancy you'll be surprised when you see me act. I haven't much voice, but it isn't voice, you know, that's wanted in this sort of thing; and though I can't say that I'm a regular dancer I can throw my feet about in a way that'll tickle 'em. And then there's you--you'll be our winning card; the star of the evening. You'll carry off the thing on your own shoulders, with me to help you. The others, they'll just fill in the picture, as it were."
"I do hope, Mr Spencer, that you won't rely on me too much. I've told you, again and again, that I've never acted in my life, and have not the faintest notion if I can or can't."
Putting his hands into his trouser pockets he tried to patronise me as if he were a wiseacre of two hundred instead of a mere child of twenty.
"My dear Miss Wilson, I know an actress when I see one."
"You have an odd way of expressing yourself. I hope that you don't mean that when you see me you see an actress; because I assure you that I trust that you do nothing of the kind."