§ 1.
Otis Pilkington had left Atlantic City two hours after the conference
which had followed the dress rehearsal, firmly resolved never to go
near “The Rose of America” again. He had been wounded in his finest
feelings. There had been a moment, when Mr Goble had given him the
choice between having the piece rewritten and cancelling the production
altogether, when he had inclined to the heroic course. But for one
thing, Mr Pilkington would have defied the manager, refused to allow
his script to be touched, and removed the play from his hands. That one
thing was the fact that, up to the day of the dress rehearsal, the
expenses of the production had amounted to the appalling sum of
thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight
cents, all of which had to come out of Mr Pilkington’s pocket. The
figures, presented to him in a neatly typewritten column stretching
over two long sheets of paper, had stunned him. He had had no notion
that musical plays cost so much. The costumes alone had come to ten
thousand six hundred and sixty-three dollars and fifty cents, and
somehow that odd fifty cents annoyed Otis Pilkington as much as
anything on the list. A dark suspicion that Mr Goble, who had seen to
all the executive end of the business, had a secret arrangement with
the costumer whereby he received a private rebate, deepened his gloom.
Why, for ten thousand six hundred and sixty-three dollars and fifty
cents you could dress the whole female population of New York State and
have a bit left over for Connecticut. So thought Mr Pilkington, as he
read the bad news in the train. He only ceased to brood upon the high
cost of costuming when in the next line but one there smote his eye an
item of four hundred and ninety-eight dollars for “Clothing.” Clothing!
Weren’t costumes clothing? Why should he have to pay twice over for the
same thing? Mr Pilkington was just raging over this, when something
lower down in the column caught his eye. It was the words:—