Joan Thursday: A Novel

But Joan's sidelong glance discovered a look of some discomfiture.

"I guess you got my letter, all right?" he pursued as they crossed to the sidewalk of the New York Theatre Building.

"Oh, yes," Joan replied evenly, after a brief pause.

"Wha'd you think of the piece?"

"Oh … the sketch! Why, it seems very interesting. Of course," Joan added in a tone of depreciation, "I didn't have much time – just glanced through it, you know – "

"I felt pretty sure you'd like it!"

"Oh, yes; I thought it quite interesting," said the girl patronizingly.

She seemed unconscious of his quick, questioning glance, and Quard withdrew temporarily into suspicious, baffled silence.

In the pause they crossed Forty-fourth Street and entered the restaurant.

It was rather crowded at that hour, but by good chance they found a table for two by one of the windows; where a heavily-mannered captain of waiters, probably thinking he recognized her, held a chair for Joan and bowed her into it with an empressement that secretly delighted the girl and lent the last effect to Quard's discomfiture.

"Please," she said gravely as the actor, with the captain suave but vigilant at his elbow, knitted expressive eyebrows over the menu – "please order something very simple. I hardly ever have much appetite so soon after breakfast."

"I – ah – how about a cocktail?" Quard ventured, relief manifest in his smoothened brow.

"I thought you – "

"Oh, for you, I mean. Mine's ice'-tea."

"I think," said Joan easily, "I would like a Bronx."

And then, while Quard was distracted by the importance of his order, she removed her gloves and, with her hands in her lap hidden beneath the table, slipped off the ring and put it away in her wrist-bag: looking about the room the while with a boldness which she could by no means have mustered a month earlier, in such surroundings.

Distrustful of her cocktail, when served, for all her impudence in naming it, she merely sipped a little and let it stand.

The mystery of the change in her worked a trace of exasperation into Quard's humour. He eyed her narrowly, with misgivings.

"I guess you ain't lost much sleep since we blew up," he hazarded abruptly.

"Whatever do you mean?" drawled Joan.

"You look and act's if you'd come into money since I saw you last."

"Perhaps I have," she said with provoking reserve.

"Meaning – mind my own business," he inferred morosely.

"Well, now, what do you think?"

"I – well, I'd be sorry to think what some folks might," he blundered.

Joan's eyes flashed ominously. "Suppose you quit worrying about me; I guess I can take care of myself."

"I guess you can," he admitted heavily. "Excuse me."

"That's all right – and so'm I." Joan relented a little; lied: "I have come into some money – not much." Her gaze was as clear and straightforward as though her mouth had been the only authentic well-spring of veracity. "Let it go at that."

"That's right, too." His face cleared, lightened. "Le's get down to brass tacks: how about that sketch?"

"Didn't I say it seemed very interesting?"

He nodded with impatience. "But you ain't said how my proposition strikes you. That's what I want to know."

"You haven't made me any proposition."

"Go on! Didn't you read my note?"

"Sure I did; but you only said you wanted me for the woman's part."

"Ain't that enough?"

She shook her head with a pitying smile. "You got to talk regular business to me. I ain't as easy as I was once; I know the game better, and I don't need a job so bad. How much will you pay?"

He hesitated: named reluctantly a figure higher than that which he had had in mind: "Thirty-five dollars…"

"Nothing doing," said Joan promptly.

"But look here: you're only a beginner – "

"It's lovely weather we're having, for September, isn't it?"

"I'd offer you more if I could afford it, but – "

"Have you heard anything from Maizie since she left town?"

"Damn Maizie! How much do you want, anyhow?"

"Fifty – and transportation on the road."

He checked; whistled guardedly and incredulously; changed his manner, bending confidentially across the table: "Listen, girlie, yunno I'd do anything in the world for you – "

"Fifty and transportation!"

"But I had to pay the guy what wrote this piece fifty for a month's option. If I take it up I gotta slip him a hundred more and twenty-five a week royalty as long's we play it: and there's three others in the cast, outsida you and me. David'll want fifty at least, and the Thief thirty-five and the servant twenty-five: there's a hundred and thirty-five already, including royalty. Add fifteen for tips and all that: a hundred and fifty; fifty to you, two-hundred. The best I can hope to drag down is three, and Boskerk'll want ten per cent commission for booking us, leaving only seventy for my bit – and I'm risking all I got salted away to try it out."

He paused with an air of appeal to which Joan was utterly cold.

"It's a woman's piece," she said tersely; "if you get a sure-'nough actress to play it, she'll want a hundred at least, if she's any good at all. You're saving fifty if you get me at my price."

This was so indisputably true that Quard was staggered and temporarily silenced.