LAURA. [Coming over to JIM and with emphasis crosses to down-stage side of bed; puts hat and scissors on bed.] I don’t want you to talk about him or any of them.  I just want you to know that I’m trying to do everything in my power to go through this season without any more trouble.  I’ve pawned everything I’ve got; I’ve cut every friend I knew.  But where am I going to end?  That’s what I want to know—­where am I going to end? [To bed and sits.] Every place I look for a position something interferes.  It’s almost as if I were blacklisted.  I know I could get jobs all right if I wanted to pay the price, but I won’t.  I just want to tell you, I won’t.  No!

[Rises, crosses to mantel, rests elbow.

JIM.  That’s the way to talk. [Rises.] I don’t know you very well, but I’ve watched you close.  I’m just a common, ordinary showman who never had much money, and I’m going out o’ date.  I’ve spent most of my time with nigger-minstrel shows and circuses, but I’ve been on the square.  That’s why I’m broke. [Rather sadly.] Once I thought the missis would have to go back and do her acrobatic act, but she couldn’t do that, she’s grown so damn fat. [Crosses to LAURA.] Just you don’t mind.  It’ll all come out right.

LAURA.  It’s an awful tough game, isn’t it?

JIM. [During this speech LAURA gets cup, pours milk back into bottle, closes biscuit-box, puts milk on shed outside, and biscuits into wardrobe, cup in alcove.] It’s hell forty ways from the Jack.  It’s tough for me, but for a pretty woman with a lot o’ rich fools jumping out o’ their automobiles and hanging around stage doors, it must be something awful.  I ain’t blaming the women.  They say “self-preservation is the first law of nature,” and I guess that’s right; but sometimes when the show is over and I see them fellows with their hair plastered back, smoking cigarettes in a [LAURA crosses to chair right of table and leans over back.] holder long enough to reach from here to Harlem, and a bank-roll that would bust my pocket and turn my head, I feel as if I’d like to get a gun and go a-shooting around this old town.

LAURA.  Jim!

JIM.  Yes, I do—­you bet.

LAURA.  That wouldn’t pay, would it?

JIM.  No, they’re not worth the job of sitting on that throne in Sing Sing, and I’m too poor to go to Matteawan.  But all them fellows under nineteen and over fifty-nine ain’t much use to themselves or anyone else.

LAURA. [Rather meditatively.] Perhaps all of them are not so bad.

JIM. [Sits on bed.] Yes, they are,—­angels and all.  Last season I had one of them shows where a rich fellow backed it on account of a girl.  We lost money and he lost his girl; then we got stuck in Texas.  I telegraphed:  “Must have a thousand, or can’t move.”  He just answered:  “Don’t move.”  We didn’t.

LAURA.  But that was business.