She passed her hands over the sponge of black down and shrugged, “Sorry I had it bobbed. All the typists do, over here. Olive’s frightfully done up. Gone to bathe.”
“Glad to have her, ain’t you?”
“Ra—ther!—Oh, Cosmo Rand called up.”
“What the—deuce did he want?”
“Ronny Dufford gave him a heap of notes about ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ I told him he’d best leave them at your office.—Shall you start rehearsing ‘Todgers’ as soon as the strike’s over?”
She sneezed, the efflorescence of her hair flapping. Mark tossed the wrap about her, kissed her ear and sat down on the steps. He said, “Don’t know, daughter. Fact is, this piece of Dufford’s hasn’t played to big business in London. I’ve got a report on it. Gurdy don’t think—”
“Oh, Gurdy! He simply can’t like a play unless it’s about the long suffering proletariat or Russia!—Why didn’t he come down?”
“Got a party with some men.”
“And I wanted the brute to show me putting tomorrow! D’you put well? Of course you do!—Oh, I know ‘Todgers’ isn’t a new Man and Superman, of course. But it’s witty and it isn’t commonplace—don’t laugh.”
Mark marshalled words, lighting a cigarette. “Honey, that’s just the trouble with the thing. It is commonplace. It’s all about nothing. And it’s too blamed English. You and Gurd seem to think it’s the bounden duty of every one to know all the latest English slang off Piccadilly—or wherever they make slang up. It ain’t so. We’ll have to have some of this piece translated as it is. Suppose you were a stenographer going to the play? You wouldn’t have been abroad. You wouldn’t know an Earl beats a Baron. You wouldn’t know that Chelsea’s a big sister to Greenwich village and the slang’d bore you to death. There’s that three speech joke about Gippies and Chokers in the second act. I expect that raised a laugh in London. How many folks in the house here would know it meant cigarettes? I didn’t till you told me. Now in London with Ealy playing the Earl—he did, didn’t he?—Well, with a smart man like that to play the Earl, the thing might go pretty well. If I had some one like that—”