“Old Mr. Higgins,” she wrote, “wants someone to take the lease of the Opera House off his hands. He’s had a cataract on his left eye for two years, and now he’s got rheumatism in his right hip and he wants to go out to California. He’s been doing great business this season and on the nights when he hasn’t had regular shows he’s been putting on big extra special feature films and packing people in. I thought maybe you’d like to try your hand at settling down and running a theatre. Of course, Main Street isn’t Broadway, but I like it lots better and maybe you could learn to, too. It means home folks to me. Maybe it might come to mean the same thing to you—some time.” Mr. Denby gasped when he read this. When he tried to talk the words did not come trippingly.... “You mean you’re going to—to—run the opera house in Cedar Rapids?” Jimmy grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him in an outburst of fierce joviality. “I mean that _we’re_ going to run it,” he said. “All _three_ of us. What do you think about smearing a catch-line all over town—‘A Homey Theatre for Home Folks’? I’ve got an idea that’d make a hit with a Certain Party.” THE END ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fresh Every Hour, by John Peter Toohey