With this sonorous¹ bit of character reading still ringing in his ears, Canby emerged from the cream-coloured apartment to find the stoop-shouldered figure of the also hypocritical son leaning wearily against the wall, waiting for a delaying elevator. The attitude was not wholly devoid² of pathos³, to Canby's view of it. Neither was the careworn⁴, harried⁵ face, unharmoniously topped by a green hat so sparklingly jaunty⁶, not only in colour but in its shape and the angle of its perch⁷, that it was outright⁸ hilarious⁹, and, above the face of Packer, made the playwright¹⁰ think pityingly of a St. Patrick's Day party holding a noisy celebration upon a hearse.  
Its wearer nodded solemnly as the elevator bounced up, flashing, and settled to the level of the floor; but the quick drop through the long shaft¹¹ seemed to do the stage-manager a disproportionate amount of good. Halfway¹² down he emitted a heavy “Whew!” of relief and threw back his shoulders. He seemed to swell¹³, to grow larger; lines verged¹⁴ into the texture¹⁵ of his face, disappearing; and with them went care and seeming years. Canby had casually¹⁶ taken him to be about forty, but so radical¹⁷ was the transformation¹⁸ of him that, as the distance from his harrowing overlord increased, the playwright beheld¹⁹ another kind of creature. In place of the placative, middle-aged²⁰ varlet, troubled and hurrying to serve, there stepped out of the elevator, at the street level, a deep-chested, assertive²¹, manly²² adventurer, about thirty, kindly²³ eyed, picturesque²⁴, and careless. The green hat belonged to him perfectly²⁵.
 
He gave Canby a look of burlesque²⁶ ruefulness over his shoulder, the comedy appeal of one schoolboy to another as they leave a scolding teacher on the far side of the door. “The governor does keep himself worked up!” he laughed, as they reached the street and paused. “If it isn't one thing, it's some thing!”
 
“Perhaps it's my play just now,” said Canby. “I was afraid, earlier this evening, he meant to drop it. Making so many changes may have upset his nerves.”
 
“Lord bless your soul! No!” exclaimed the new Packer. “His nerves are all right! He's always the same! He can't help it!”
 
“I thought possibly he might have been more upset than usual,” Canby said. “There was a critic or something that—”
 
“No, no, Mr. Canby!” Packer

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