"You ought to be very grateful to me. Are you?" "No." "I wonder what you'd do under the direction of a man you happened to like?" "I don't know." Joan gave him a sullen look. "Will you please let me pass." "Delighted." He moved aside with mocking courtesy. "I ask only one thing of you: don't fall in love with me before our first night. I haven't got time to sour another sweet young thing's amiable disposition.... Keep on hating me as hard as you like--and we'll make at least a half-portion actress of you yet...." Toward the end of the second week, Joan began to notice that Rideout was growing less assiduous in attendance. At first inclined to lay this to his satisfaction with the progress--to her the production seemed to be taking on form and colour in a way to wonder at--she later overheard a chance remark of one of her associates, to the effect that Rideout was himself rehearsing with another company. "Well," someone commented, "if it was my coin back of this show, I'd stick by it if I had to play the office-boy." "I guess," was the reply, "Rideout ain't got any too much outside what he's sunk in this production. Shouldn't wonder if he needs what he's to get with Minnie Aspen." "Mebbe. He's a good trouper. What does he drag down, anyway?" "Four hundred a week." "Nix with those Lambs' Club figures. I mean regular money." "Oh, two hundred and fifty, sure." "Now you've said something...." During the third week it was announced that "The Jade God" would open in Altoona on the following Monday. And at the same time Joan discovered that she was expected to provide her own costume, a simple affair but unhappily beyond the resources of either her wardrobe or her pocket-book. In despair she took the advice of Mrs. Arnold (the sweet-faced lady of fifty, whom Joan counted her only friend on the company) and approached Rideout's personal representative, Druggett, with a demand for an advance. With considerable reluctance Druggett surrendered fifteen dollars, and promised her as much more on Monday, toward expenses on the road. And again on the advice and introduction of Mrs. Arnold, the girl succeeded in satisfying her needs at an instalment-plan clothing-house: paying eight dollars down on a bill of about forty and agreeing to remit the balance at the rate of four dollars each week. The final dress-rehearsal was called for Saturday morning. They were to leave New York Sunday night. But on Friday afternoon a sense of uneasiness and uncertainty invaded the temper of the organization. Wilbrow neglected the players to engage in protracted conferences with Matthias, Rideout, Moran, and Druggett, out of earshot, at the back of the auditorium. One or two weather-wise "troupers" hazarded gloomy surmises as to the nature of the "snag": that most favoured involved a "shake-up with the Shuberts" over some change in their route. With a singular unanimity the prophets of disaster either avoided or overlooked the actual cause of the trouble.