“A bit. It’s a bit show. _I Want Work!_ FKIP hopes to sell it to some sponsor as a good-will buy. People out of work tell their stories. People who can give them jobs write in or telephone. You’re a kid whose father’s home with a busted leg. The furniture’s due to be heaved into the street.” Joe was puzzled. “I thought people in need of work told their stories.” “Don’t you get it? FKIP gets in touch with churches and welfare organizations. Men and women come in; script writers take their hard-luck stories and put in the zing. A professional cast puts on the show.” “But people think they’re listening to—” “The actual men and women who need the jobs? Sure. That’s radio. Radio runs on a clock; a fifteen-minute show is a fifteen-minute show. _We Want Work_ must be drama. How you getting drama out of anybody you happen to bring in? How you going to hold them down to fifteen minutes? Some will want to talk all night; some will get mike fright and won’t give. A professional cast has to fake it. A real kid came in with the story you’ll read.” So that, Joe thought, was how it was done. Something else he’d learned about radio. “What time do they want me?” “Two o’clock Wednesday. John Dennis’ office. That’s the little fat man who auditioned you.” Riding out to Northend Joe saw what Amby had meant by “bit show.” Everybody in the cast would have a short, terse part to read. He’d get on only when some boy had a plea to make. Perhaps he wouldn’t get on more than once or twice a month. But rehearsals were six dollars an hour, or part of an hour, and every show would be fifteen dollars. Not bad. The bus dropped him off and he walked rapidly toward home. “Mother!” He was going to be calm about this. “I have my first part. I’m in my first show.” Calmness exploded. “Boy, do I feel grand.” “Joe!” The warmth of his mother’s understanding made him feel even better. “How nice.” She led him out to the breakfast nook to pie and a glass of milk. While he ate he told her of how radio put on its personal experience programs like _I Want Work_, and about Lucille Borden, and about money. Six dollars for rehearsals and fifteen dollars for the show. “The day you go on the air,” Kate Carlin said whimsically, “there’ll be no dinner prepared. I’ll be too excited. Your father’ll probably have to come home and cook himself an egg.” They laughed together. Joe thought, as he had thought many times before, how easy it was to laugh with his mother. John Dennis’ office was on the third floor of the FKIP building, a small out-of-the-way sort of room at the building’s rear. This third floor might have been the fifth floor where Joe had auditioned in Studio K. Given over to the pick-and-shovel work of radio, the third floor spent no money for glitter and blue leather. Four people, all talking at once, were crowded into the office with Dennis; three others, in the hall, walked about, bumped into each other, and read script aloud.