Bill fastened a gimlet eye upon his brother-in-law and drew a deep breath.
“Father!” he said. “Father!”
“You’ll have to brighten up Bill’s dialogue a lot,” said Lucille, critically, “or you will never get bookings.”
“Father!”
“I mean, it’s all right as far as it goes, but it’s sort of monotonous. Besides, one of you ought to be asking questions and the other answering. Mill ought to be saying, ‘Who was that lady I saw you coming down the street with?’ so that you would be able to say, ‘That wasn’t a lady. That was my wife.’ I KNOW! I’ve been to lots of vaudeville shows.”
Bill relaxed his attitude. He deflated his chest, spread his heels, and ceased to draw in his abdomen.
“We’d better try this another time, when we’re alone,” he said, frigidly. “I can’t do myself justice.”
“Why do you want to do yourself justice?” asked Lucille.
“Right-o!” said Archie, affably, casting off his forbidding expression like a garment. “Rehearsal postponed. I was just putting old Bill through it,” he explained, “with a view to getting him into mid-season form for the jolly old pater.”
“Oh!” Lucille’s voice was the voice of one who sees light in darkness. “When Bill walked in like a cat on hot bricks and stood there looking stuffed, that was just the Personality That Wins!”
“That was it.”
“Well, you couldn’t blame me for not recognising it, could you?”
Archie patted her head paternally.
“A little less of the caustic critic stuff,” he said. “Bill will be all right on the night. If you hadn’t come in then and put him off his stroke, he’d have shot out some amazing stuff, full of authority and dynamic accents and what not. I tell you, light of my soul, old Bill is all right! He’s got the winning personality up a tree, ready whenever he wants to go and get it. Speaking as his backer and trainer, I think he’ll twist your father round his little finger. Absolutely! It wouldn’t surprise me if at the end of five minutes the good old dad started pumping through hoops and sitting up for lumps of sugar.”
“It would surprise ME.”
“Ah, that’s because you haven’t seen old Bill in action. You crabbed his act before he had begun to spread himself.”
“It isn’t that at all. The reason why I think that Bill, however winning his, personality may be, won’t persuade father to let him marry a girl in the chorus is something that happened last night.”
“Last night?”
“Well, at three o’clock this morning. It’s on the front page of the early editions of the evening papers. I brought one in for you to see, only you were so busy. Look! There it is!”
Archie seized the paper.
“Oh, Great Scot!”
“What is it?” asked Bill, irritably. “Don’t stand goggling there! What the devil is it?”
“Listen to this, old thing!”
REVELRY BY NIGHT. SPIRITED BATTLE ROYAL AT HOTEL COSMOPOLIS. THE HOTEL DETECTIVE HAD A GOOD HEART BUT PAULINE PACKED THE PUNCH.
The logical contender for Jack Dempsey’s championship honours has been discovered; and, in an age where women are stealing men’s jobs all the time, it will not come as a surprise to our readers to learn that she belongs to the sex that is more deadly than the male. Her name is Miss Pauline Preston, and her wallop is vouched for under oath–under many oaths–by Mr. Timothy O’Neill, known to his intimates as Pie-Face, who holds down the arduous job of detective at the Hotel Cosmopolis.
At three o’clock this morning, Mr. O’Neill was advised by the night- clerk that the occupants of every room within earshot of number 618 had ‘phoned the desk to complain of a disturbance, a noise, a vocal uproar proceeding from the room mentioned. Thither, therefore, marched Mr. O’Neill, his face full of cheese-sandwich, (for he had been indulging in an early breakfast or a late supper) and his heart of devotion to duty. He found there the Misses Pauline Preston and “Bobbie” St. Clair, of the personnel of the chorus of the Frivolities, entertaining a few friends of either sex. A pleasant time was being had by all, and at the moment of Mr. O’Neill’s entry the entire strength of the company was rendering with considerable emphasis that touching ballad, “There’s a Place For Me In Heaven, For My Baby-Boy Is There.”