Sheila protested, “Oh, but I couldn’t let anybody else play it first.”
“You could join the company as a guest for a week and play the part yourself.”
“Fine!” Sheila exclaimed. “I’ve been planning to put in a good hard summer in stock. It’s such an education—limbers your mind up so, to play all sorts of parts. See if you can find me a good, coolish sort of town with a decent stock company that will let me in.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” said Reben, with a salute. “And now, Mr. Vickery, you’ve got your work cut out, too. See if you can get your play into shape for a stock production.”
Reben was attempting to scare Vickery just enough to make him toil, but he would have given up completely if Sheila had not begged him to go on, asked him to come to see her now and then and “talk things over.”
He promised with gratitude and went, carrying that burden of delay which weighs down the playwright until he reaches the swift judgment of the critics. When he had gone Reben spoke more confidently of the play. He was already considering the cast. He mentioned various names and discarded this actor or that actress because he or she was a blond or too dark, too tall, or too short, lean, fat, commonplace, eccentric. Nobody quite fitted his pictures of Vickery’s people. At length he said:
“I’ll tell you a man I’ve had in mind for the lead. He’d be ideal, I think. He’s young, handsome, educated; he’s got breeding; he can wear a dress-suit; and he hasn’t been on the stage long enough to be spoiled by the gush of fool women. He’s tall and athletic and a gentleman.”
“And who’s all that?” said Sheila. “The angel Gabriel?”
“Young fellow named—er—Elmore—no, Eldon; that’s it. You must know him. He was with you in the ‘Friend in Need’ company.”
“Oh yes,” Sheila murmured, “I know him.”