"I notice in your expenses you allow nothing for your company."
"The company have all volunteered. Most of them are amateurs."
"And where does your humble servant come in?"
"Why, I propose to make it all right with you out of my share."
"Ye gods on high Olympus, look down on us in compassion and smile!" spoke Handy in the most tragic voice of which he was capable of employing. "Has it come to pass that a verdant experimentalist like you, Fogg, could intimate to a veteran of my standing that I should take my chances of remuneration from the proceeds of such a quixotic scheme? Go to, Fogg! I love thee, but never more be officer of mine." Then laying aside his serio-comic manner and assuming one that more easily appertained to him, he continued: "Fogg, old pal, I told you that you could count on me to help you out, and you can. I will manage the stage, but skip me on the acting. If the stuff comes in, I know you'll do the square thing. If the receipts are shy, well and good. You'll get left as well as I. Get the old girls to sell all the tickets they can—beforehand. Mind now, beforehand. Depend on nothing from the public for a benefit, and as for the night sale, it won't amount to a paper of pins. I've been there before, old man, and I know of what I speak. Let me tell you—some friends of mine once upon a time got up a benefit for a widow. They gave a good show, had lots of fun, but——"
"But what?" inquired Fogg anxiously.
"Oh, nothing! Only they landed the poor woman fifty dollars or so in debt. That's all."
"Holy Moses!" was all the response that Fogg could make; but he evidently was doing a great deal of thinking. In this state of mind Handy left him.