"Hold up! How could you get plays on such conditions?" said DeLancy, who had been held breathless by this Utopian scheme.
"Any manager in the city with a sense of publicity would jump at the chance of giving an afternoon performance, expenses paid, under such conditions, especially as the list would be guaranteed. Then, above all, I'd give the public fiction, the best I could get and first hand. What do you think gives _Le Petit Parisien_ and _Le Petit Journal_ a circulation of about a million each and all over France? Serial novels. Do you know the circulation of papers in New York? There are only three over a hundred thousand and the greatest has hardly a quarter of a million. However, I won't go on. You see my ideas make an institution--the modern institution, replacing and absorbing all past institutions."
"And what else do you want?" said Bojo, laughing.
"I want that by the time I'm thirty-five. I want ten millions and I want to be at forty either senator or ambassador to Paris or London. I want to build a yacht that will defend the American cup and to own a horse that will win the derby.
The four burst into laughter simultaneously, none more heartily than Marsh, who added:
"Remember, we're to tell the truth, and that's what I'd like to do." He concluded: "Win or lose, play the limit. Never mind, Granny; when I'm broke, you'll give me a job. Up to you. Confess."
Granning began diffidently, for he was always slow at speech and the fluency of Marsh's recital intimidated him.
"I don't know that there's anything so interesting in my future," he began, turning the menu nervously in his hands and fixing a spot on the tablecloth where a wine stain broke the white monotony. "You see, I'm different from you fellows. You're facing life in a different sort of way. I'm not sure but what there's more danger in it than you think, but the fact is you're all looking for the gamble. You want what you want, Roscy, by the time you're thirty-five. Bojo and Fred want a million by the time they're thirty. You're looking for the easy way--the quick way. You may get it and then you may not. You've got friends, opportunities--perhaps you will."
"That's where you'll never learn, you old fossil," said Marsh. "If you'd get out and meet people, why, some time you'd strike a man with a nice fat contract in his pocket looking for just the reliable--" he stopped, not wishing to add, "old plodder that you are."