"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.