"What's your line?" he asked her. "I take it you have one by your being
here. Besides, I am sure you have. I am an old fighter. I can tell the
young soldier. What's your regiment?"

Joan laughed. "I'm a drummer boy," she answered. "I beat my drum each
week in a Sunday newspaper, hoping the lads will follow."

"You feel you must beat that drum," he suggested. "Beat it louder and
louder and louder till all the world shall hear it."

"Yes," Joan agreed, "I think that does describe me."

He nodded. "I thought you were an artist," he said. "Don't let them
ever take your drum away from you. You'll go to pieces and get into
mischief without it."

"I know an old actress," he continued. "She's the mother of four. They
are all on the stage and they've all made their mark. The youngest was
born in her dressing-room, just after the curtain had fallen. She was
playing the Nurse to your mother's Juliet. She is still the best Nurse
that I know. 'Jack's always worrying me to chuck it and devote myself to
the children,' she confided to me one evening, while she was waiting for
her cue. 'But, as I tell him, I'm more helpful to them being with them
half the day alive than all the day dead.' That's an anecdote worth
remembering, when your time comes. If God gives woman a drum he doesn't
mean man to take it away from her. She hasn't got to be playing it for
twenty-four hours a day. I'd like you to have seen your mother's
Cordelia."