“They’d throw things.”
“And, curiously enough, in the first version I thought that scene was good. He has made a mistake in keeping that hard note in the character. Besides, now that the Pauline has been sweetened, there is no longer any occasion for such drastic measures. And the Comic Relief, Manning?”
“Horrible, Guv’nor. Out of place.”
“I felt the same. Send Lennard a wire, Manning.”
“Saying it’s all off?”
“No, no—but I want to talk to him.”
On his way to the Post Office, Manning almost ran into Theodore Lennard, who had followed in the wake of his play. The stage-manager buttonholed him at once.
“You’ve fairly done it,” he opened fire. “Your play’s like a bit of bad joinery where the joints don’t fit, and rattle. It’s a hash, old man, a hash!”
“But what I cannot understand,” Eliphalet was saying five minutes later, “is how you could put such words into the mouth of a clergyman.”
“I didn’t,” came the plaintive reply. “I only left them in.”