Tom Carlin came home an hour earlier than usual. Coming down the stairs, Joe heard low-voiced talk in the kitchen. Conversation died away with his appearance. “Didn’t the show seem to have more body to-day?” his father asked. Evidently there was to be no telling him the show had been bad. He was grateful for that. What good was family loyalty that blindly deceived itself? There was no talk of _Sue Davis_ at the evening meal. Tom Carlin felt through his pockets. “Care to walk to the corner, Joe? I’m out of tobacco.” Joe thought: “He wants to talk to me alone.” “You told Mother something would turn up,” his father said as soon as they reached the street. “I’ve been trying to figure out if you really meant that. Men usually try to shield the women at home from their business worries. Was what happened to-day a situation that turns up habitually in radio or was it serious?” Joe did not hesitate. “It was serious.” “Munson didn’t want you originally and has resented you. Is that what you mean?” Joe nodded. “Do you think you’re out of the show permanently?” “I don’t know. I might never have had the part if Sonny Baker had been in town last month.” He had never before talked to his father so freely and so easily, man to man, without restraint. The owner of the neighborhood store greeted them. “Glad to hear you back on the air, Joe. You acted good—better than I ever heard you before. Nothing like a little vacation.” “Nothing,” Tom Carlin said dryly. Joe winced. Walking home, Tom Carlin said: “That hurt, Joe, didn’t it? I was working at your age in a country store for two dollars a week. There was another merchant in town with a more imposing store, and I expected to go to work for him the next month for two-fifty a week. In those days a great many persons bought bean coffee and ground it at home. A customer came in for a coffee-mill. I took a heavy mill down from the shelf and dropped it. It smashed, and the handle flew up and knocked off the customer’s hat. He left in a rage. My employer fired me. The other merchant decided he didn’t want a clumsy lout for a clerk. I was out of the job I was holding and out of the job I had expected to hold. I thought it might help if I told you.” It seemed incredible that the man who owned one of the brightest stores in the city should have lost two jobs in one day. Two jobs—two parts. “It does help,” Joe said. Suddenly he knew that to-morrow he’d go downtown. Downtown was his world with or without a voice, with or without a part. But he wouldn’t go downtown with a swaggering, theatrical front. Front was a fake.