“How much would it cost?”
“I don’t know. I learned what radio time would cost. I stopped right there.”
“Suppose you plugged a book. Would the publisher go in with you? It’s their book.”
“Assume,” his father said at last, “that I wrote to a publisher. He’d want to know what kind of show. Well, what kind?”
Joe had no answer.
After supper he turned on the radio. He swung from station to station, recognizing the cast of every local show. The old hunger was on him. How close had he come to getting any of these parts, or had he been considered at all?
“Joe,” his mother said gently, “you look done in.”
Not done in, he told himself; discouraged. He couldn’t shake off a sense of shock. Archie Munn picking up a few stray dollars as a pallbearer!
The telephone rang.
“Joe,” Tony Vaux said jovially, “I’m calling you and Pop in for a reading. The He people are warming up. Early. About nine-thirty.”