Laurence nodded. He looked tired and a little bored, Banneker thought.
“And a critic has a happy thought and five minutes to think it over, and writes something mean and cruel and facetious, and perhaps undoes a whole year’s work. Is that right?”
“They ought to bar him from the theater,” declared one of the women in the cast.
“And what do you think of that?” inquired Marrineal, still addressing Banneker.
Banneker laughed. “Admit only those who wear the bright and burnished badge of the Booster,” he said. “Is that the idea?”
“Nobody objects to honest criticism,” began Betty Raleigh heatedly, and was interrupted by a mild but sardonic “Hear! Hear!” from one of the magazine reviewers.
“Honest players don’t object to honest criticism, then,” she amended. “It’s the unfairness that hurts.”
“All of which appears to be based on the assumption that it is impossible for Mr. Gurney honestly to have disliked Mr. Laurence’s play,” pointed out Banneker. “Now, delightful as it seemed to me, I can conceive that to other minds—”
“Of course he could honestly dislike it,” put in the playwright hastily. “It isn’t that.”
“It’s the mean, slurring way he treated it,” said the star “Mr. Banneker, just what did he say to you about it?”