"I tucked my little scrapbook under my arm and sat in the waiting-room. After hanging around in there for about half an hour I would be permitted to glide into the big boss. I had a nice little monologue framed up as to my virtues—no, that's the wrong word—ability.

"None of the managers asked me what I had done, but what did I GET.

"When I called on the gentlemen by whom I am now employed he said: 'Talent? Oh, piffle! Can you wear tights?' He said that to me.

"I merely mentioned that I used to work for Mr. Ziegfeld and he hired me at once. I didn't even have to show him my picture taken as Aphrodite in a classical art study.

"I went over to rehearsal, and of all the frowsy dames I ever piped—far be it from me to knock, but they looked like a bunch of pie-trammers that had just rushed over from Child's. The stage manager was a friend of mine, and I asked him when he had started an old ladies' home, and he told me—mind you, this is the strictest confidence—that the divorce courts and the cheap rates from Pittsburg was raising Cain with the crop of merry-merries.

"I was standing over near the piano when the leading lady galloped in. Believe me the dog she put on would make you think that she had every other star looking like a twinkle, and before she landed where she is now she was leading lady for a moving picture company.

"But the comedian—honest, when he gets a couple under his belt he is just that funny—gee! I nearly howled my head off at him calling the tenor Gertrude.

"Say, he got awfully peevish and was mad enough to crush a grape when he found out that he couldn't have the 'spot' when he does his duet number with the ingenue, and when he found out that he would have to dress with the character comedian, who is a low, coarse brute, always drinking beer in the dressing room and not sharing with anybody, he got so mad I thought he would burst into tears.

"He's another of these exaggerated ego guys, every move a picture, wears his handkerchief up his sleeve and all that kind of guff.

"The funniest thing about the whole show is that the author is staging the piece, and what he don't know about the show business would make the Lenox Library look like a news stand He wanted the tenor to hold the prima so she couldn't show her rings. And that's the only thing that got her the job—her jewelry.

"We open in Hartford in a couple of weeks and then play Washington and then come in here for a run.

"Honest, the way those two towns fall for this: 'Manager Soandso is to be congratulated upon securing for his next week's attraction Mr. Suchandsuch's elaborate production of the great London success, 'The Rancid Prune,' with the following all-star cast of metropolitan favorites.' And some of them, ach, Himmel!

"I do wish that the merry Springtime would hurry up and kick in. Them can have the Winter that likes it, but not for little Angel-face; give me the summer and that 'Robins Nest Again' number.

"When the bock beer signs again wave in the breeze and the Dutchman in the delicatessen don't think you are a bug when you ask for Summer sausage; when the mint commences to sprout in the cigar box on the fire escape and all nature seems glad. I just love those trips on the night boat up the Hudson with the searchlight: shining on the trees and the ice tinkling in the highball glass as the steward comes down the deck.

"You know that I am naturally—even when sober—of a romantic and emotional temperament, but those nights I can sit and hold hands and inhale cocktails until daylight without an effort.

"And then Sundays down at Manhattan Beach dubbing around in a bathing suit—and take this from me as advance information, the bathing suit I am going to wear this year is going to chase the waves clear out in the ocean. I don't know yet whether I can wear it at Rockaway or not; it's a cinch I can't if they have another moral wave like they did last year. It's chic without being bizarre.

"And I can safely say without fear of successful contradiction that I look well in it, and if I can keep my hair from getting wet I'll be the one best bet. But if the briny mingles with my marcel wave—good night, nurse!

"One of Mr. Hepner's assistants told me that if salt water ever touched my golden tresses that the only thing I could do to keep them from turning green was to get scalped.

"A friend of mine who owns a yacht is going to send his wife and daughter on a trip to Europe, and he told me to count myself one of a party of six that are going to make a tour of all the neighboring resorts—no, not that kind—Summer resorts. Fresh!

"We had the one grand time last year.

"I never had a more enjoyable time. Just press a button and the steward was right on the job to take your order.

"Anything from a glass of hops to a Merry Widow cocktail, and you didn't have to dig once. Everything paid for ad lib.

"Ah! those happy evenings that appeal so to every true lover of Nature and well mixed drinks. To sit and listen to the lapping of the waters—and booze.

"Us girls are talking about getting a houseboat this season if we don't have to work. Of course, the chances are that it will never come off, but up to date that is the last dressing room pipe.

"We are figuring on getting a nice place within trolley distance of Broadway and then get several of our wine agent friends to stock it for us.

"We won't need much furniture—an ice box and a corkscrew are the only real necessities.

"Do you think it would cast asparagus on my character if I should reside in a houseboat unchaperoned.

"Oh, we can get the wardrobe mistress for a chaperone, but why talk shop; and besides she gets a bun on and goes to sleep in a hamper, and we girls have to pack our own bundles, and if she got soused while chaperoning the mob it would take away the otherwise proper air of refinement and leave us open to the gibes and scoffs of those who were not so fortunate as to be invited to our houseboat.

"Say, I don't want to indulge in brag or ostentation, but the gown I am going to wear to the Friar festival they are going to pull off in May is going to have some class to it.

"Wilbur—that's my betrothed—is going to be one of the main guys, and when it comes his day to get the showing keep your eye on muh.

"I think Mr. Klaw and Mr. Erlanger are just the nicest men to give the Friars the New York Theatre for the big doings.

"You want to go. All our set will be there with their hair in a braid.

"Oh, yes; Wilbur and I are getting along just splendid. We have been engaged now for nearly two weeks and have only broken it off three times.

"I went to see 'Miss Hook of Holland' the other night and Wilbur got jealous and told me that if his show wasn't good enough for me to see without having to go to others to just come across with his ring and he would cancel the engagement.

"I, being a girl of some spirit and pride, just naturally yanked Mr. Ring off and threw it at him.

"That made him hedge and before long we were cooing over a bottle of wine like a couple of turtle doves.

"You can't take any too much off these men. Keep 'em guessing; thats my system. And then they will walk sideways, so as to not overlook any bets.

"Take that Alla McSweeney for example. She falls in love and is always on the job, like Faithful Fido. Sits around the flat and gazes at his photo all day and from quitting time on she is there with her ear to the ground waiting to hear him get out of the elevator.

"That aint little Sabrina's graft.

"Nix. Wilbur calls up and I tell him to wait a minute and let him cool his heels downstairs for a while, and then when I do send for him to come up he is more glad to see me and manages to amuse himself in hunting for a stray glove or a handkerchief.

"And then sometimes when he calls up I am out, just to let him know that he is not the only star performer.

"That stunt keeps them at heel all the time and so busy trying to keep track of you that they don't have time to look for any other dame. So that it works both ways for the dealer, and a couple of tears will always copper any wrong play you make.

"This Beatrice Fairfax dope may be all right in the simple country maiden, but it don't go in the show business worth a whoop. You've got to be on your toes in this game and play no steady system.

"My, how I run on! Here I will be late for rehearsal and will have to give the stage manager an excuse and he will fall for it until some time I have got good reason for being late, and then he will call me.

"Say, is it considered au fait for a bride-about-to-be to do a little plugging for wedding presents this early in the game? Well, so long."



Sabrina in this chapter attends a beefsteak party and becomes involved in an argument with a certain party who was formerly her roommate but whom she left quietly and by night.



CHAPTER TEN

"Don't I look like a tea store chromo?" inquired Sabrina as Estelle, her maid, opened the door. "Oh, such a time I had! Never again will I go to see that Alla McSweeney. Pipe my dial! Get onto the scratch! There are some wounds that even powder cannot hide. It all started this way. The girls down at Wilbur's show decided to give a beefsteak in honor of the prima donna getting the can. Believe me, if they had let a hanging piece fall on her she would have got but half what was coming to her. Cat! Well, I should say so, dear. She spoiled the whole effect of that 'I'd Rather Be a Lemon Than a Quince' number just because she wouldn't let the pony girls share the spot in the picture. Honest, she caused more troubles than Louis Nethersole's English actors ever imagined they had.

"I met her socially several times, and she certainly was perfectly lovely to me. But when she got back on the stage, why, she even had the stagehands stepping sideways, and you know them. And the manager couldn't call his soul his own until he had loaded her into a cab and on her way. Wilbur told me that while on the road that between watching the panners in the box offices and keeping her from throwing a fit on the stage he got gray-headed. As for her maid, I can only say, 'Help that poor creature.' One time the maid pinched her foot while buttoning her shoe and what does the prima donna do but bounce her whole makeup box on the top of the maid's defenseless nob. And the way she looks on the street compared to what she does on the stage, that makeup box must certainly have been of some size. Of course I am not roasting the poor creature, for it may be temperament instead of temper, but I am merely stating what I have heard.

"But to get back to the big eat. The prima donna got too gay and when they struck New York the home office got wise and she wouldn't stand a cut in her salary, so they just naturally decorated her with the festive bug and told her to take a whirl at vaudeville or something else real mean. Say, when the news got out that she was to leave everybody was so happy that even the chorus men went out and bought each other a beer. What do you think of that? Well, anyway the mob got together after the performance and decided to celebrate the event in fitting and proper style by getting soused, and Alla kindly donated her new flat. Yes, the Judge caught a sleeper on Wall Street and she was in strong with the cop on the beat and the people on the floor below her had moved on account of the noise. Selfish people. They didn't want to do anything all night but sleep, and Alla complained that they were wearing out the steam pipe by pounding on it.

"After the show the whole outfit cleaned all the makeup off except behind the ears and took it on the lope for Alla's domicile. Me being the guest of honor, I naturally kicked in late. Gee! everybody of any importance was there, even some of the principals, and every other show in town sent at least one representative. Say, the drum was so crowded that some of the couples had to turn the fire escape into a conservatory. They would crawl out there and bombard the neighborhood with empty bottles, until the cop on the corner would rap and then for some two or three minutes the block would be as silent as a tomb.

"Wilbur of course was there in his official capacity as press agent, to not only add tone to the gathering, but to make sure that it reached the night desk of all the papers, for if these society guys get a column and a half they ought to be willing to slip us poor chorus dolls a couple of sticks and keep it from under police news.

"I was there to see that Wilbur did not, under the influence of the charming company, make any remarks that might be misconstrued by any of the assembled gathering as a declaration of love. For them dolls are always on the job and the only time they don't catch a live one is when their hands are tied. Jealous? What! Me? Not so you can notice it, but I ain't going to have anybody have anything on me, and while I caused no scenes, I left the impression that I had Wilbur trained so that he would roll over and play dead at the word of command. While these 'keep off the grass' signs don't do much good, still they run a horrible bluff. Did Wilbur get wise to this move on my part? Not on your life! If he found out that I was, figuratively speaking, riding herd on him, he would get chesty and all swelled up until it would be my painful duty to lance him. I don't know yet whether Wilbur is a rhinestone Billie or a Whisky amber Billie with a dash of bitters Billie, but I am On the Job Betty, all right, all right.

"Well, to get back to the beefsteak. After all the guests had assembled, which was maybe some 2 a.m., they started in. It was merely the ordinary stunt of beer and beefsteak and beefsteak and beer, but the hours were enlivened by the vaudeville performances of the guests. This was before the precinct sergeant knocked on the door. One old frump that must have been tramming a mace in the Roman Hanging Gardens got a yen that was doing imitations she had Elsie Janis and Gertrude Hoffman looking like a couple of false starts. Another took the hooks out of her marsel wave and did that time-worn stunt of 'Laska.' Then one of the chorus men gave an imitation of George Cohan, as usual. But that don't explain the scratches; does it?

"To go back sometime, there was a certain skirt that I used to room with in Chicago when we were both broke, but one night she went out with a bunch of siss-boom-ah! boys and came home with a large and juicy snoot full and spent the early morning hours in leaning out of the window of the apartment and whistling through her fingers to the milkmen, as well as staging a disrobing number in the middle of the room with the curtains up to such an extent that the inhabitants of the outlying districts had to wait sometime for their morning milk.

"This, naturally grated on my refined sensibilities, so the next morning while she was yet beating the hay, I packed my little suitcase and took it on the run away from there, leaving her, you might say, on the pan. I went into the pony ballet of a La Salle Theatre show—can you see me as a pony?—and I heard that she was advancing Art with a stock burlesque in South Chicago. That evening she was among those present at the aforementioned social function. And while we kissed and embraced each other with the affection of long lost sisters, still I could detect above the odor of cocktails an underlying current of soreness. So we clinched, but I took particular pains to see that we went clean in the breakaway.

"A young gentleman from Pittsburg was one of the guests and this creature naturally put herself forward to make him have a real nice time and, while I am true to Wilbur, still I think it my duty to be kind to every one. This Chicago party got the hunch that I was trying to beat her to this Pittsburg wop and she managed to get him in a corner and I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was making a strenuous effort to reveal some of my past, and, while I have never done anything that would cast a breath of suspicion on my spotless character, still I knew that this party would not hesitate for a minute to do some romancing, so I naturally edged over toward that particular corner as if I was not noticing myself do it, and overheard her inform the gent, that while I had the outward appearance of an innocent young babe, I was a viper at heart, and had beat it out of Chicago with some ten or twelve thousand dollars' worth of her personal jewelry.

"Shucks! All the jewelry she ever had was a diamond stickpin she bit out of a gentleman's scarf when they were going home in a cab, and all she had left of that was the pawn ticket.

"Naturally hearing the libelous remarks, I was compelled to defend myself, so I quietly interrupted her conversation by remarking lightly over her shoulder, 'Ah! I see, Laura, that you are still a member of the Arm and Hammer band, and I wish to mention in passing that the only ten or twelve thousand dollars' worth of jewelry you ever had you returned to the property man every night after the ballroom scene.'

"As for me eloping with your belongings all you ever had was a dirty handkerchief kimona, a Fluffy Ruffles skirt and a near-seal jacket, and you had to throw a chill when you entered a cafe so as not to have to take that off. If you had you would have been disgraced for life."

After those kind remarks Laura's goat naturally make a quick exit. She jumped to her feet, and with one of those 'Parted on Her Bridal Tour' expressions, said: 'It's you, is it, Sabrina; you were always noted as the Butting-in Kid. But now if you have got all of that humorous monologue of yours out of your system you can toddle right along and sell your matches, as this kind gentleman and I are discussing a few words in private and do not wish them to get all over town.'

"'Can that chatter,' said I, 'and don't forget the happy days you spent at Sid Euson's.' Right there is where I got that scratch. But I being pretty nifty with my fins gave her a cuff on the chops that she won't have to put down in her diary to remember. I was just fishing for an opening to land when Wilbur stayed my upraised arm, and I could only give her a kick on the limb with my French heel. Naturally the noise and the words attracted some attention even from that bunch; that is, it could be heard above the usual hum of conversation. The dame, knowing that I was in the right, tried to tuck the Pittsburg party under her arm and duck the dump, but Pittsburg being a game guy, stuck for the big show, and Laura loped for the 'L' alone.

"Wilbur was naturally surprised and grieved at my actions, and for a moment allowed the green-eyed monster to take up standing room in his heart, thinking that I had succumbed to the wealth of the coal dealer, but my ready outburst of maidenly tears quickly set me to rights. That was the only thing that marred the evening, except one of the girls spoke kindly to a chorus man, and he, poor fellow, threw a fainting fit and we had to force the only jig juice in the crowd between his clinched teeth before he could be revived.

"Yes, I am still on the stage, but I have got the stage manager trained so that I only have to slip him a five spot any night I fail to appear. No, there isn't much doing except that some of the girls are rehearsing for the soul kiss contest, but I personally do not have to advertise.

"What! Going? Say, on your way down tell the barhop to mix me up a life preserver in a rose glass."



Sabrina touches on the advantages of having a hotel for chorus girls and makes several comments on the dramatic possibilities of "The Mangled Doughnut," with which she is rehearsing.



CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Say," remarked Sabrina, as we met her in front of her favorite cafe, "say, loosen up, cough, give down, come to, kick in. You've got to donate for a couple of tickets to the annual benefit of the Unemployed or Otherwise Disabled Chorus Girls' Home, and the quicker you come across the quicker your suffering will be over. Sure we are going to have a benefit that will make even the Friar Festival get up and hump itself. And you know that's going to be some show. The Chorus Girls' Mutual Knocking Society is going to build a home so that the poor doll who comes in from the high grass in her normal condition, broke, can have some place to go and rest and refresh herself without having to hock a couple of wedding rings before she can have her hotel trunk sent up.

"There's going to be fifty sleeping rooms and ninety-six maids, so that if the poor skirt wakes up in the morning feeling far from a well woman all she has to do is to tickle the zing-zing and the maid is right there on the job. There is to be nineteen sound-proof parlors with two pianos in each parlor.

"While there will be a chaperon, of course, she will permit the young ladies to entertain their friends in a quiet and ladylike manner until the porter starts cleaning up the bar in the morning. The inmates will of course be allowed to sign checks, but from visitors only cash will be accepted.

"Can you see a mob of those merry dames around that drum? Talk about your something doing every minute! Say, it will look like open time around that shack. Burlesquers are canceled. They can't come into the home. Well, they never have much of a home anyway, so they don't miss much.

"Burlesque is sure one strenuous existence. Mother made me quit. That and the doctor telling me that I would ruin myself standing around a draughty stage in tights. And besides those burlesque stage hands certainly are cruel. Why, you have to put the money right in their hand before they will beat it across the alley for a can of suds. If that ain't cruelty I don't know what is. Do they think us girls would enjoy our refreshment if we have to pay for it ourselves. Why, it hasn't got the same flavor. Do you think a girl lacks class when she puts salt in her beer?

"That home will be a great thing. Imagine going home every night without wondering if your room is locked and the landlady sitting on your trunks at the top landing. You can just flounce into your nest any old time and know that everything is right there, unless one crafty girl has bribed the chambermaid for the key. You can never tell about those people. Why, I know one girl who kept stealing hairs out of the different wigs in the dressing-rooms until she had enough to make a Dutch braid, and then she put on such a front and chest that she wouldn't speak to any of the other girls should she happen to meet them socially. I have always wanted a home, not that I haven't been offered several, but I mean a permanent one. But to continue about the benefit.

"Wilbur is going to manage it, and he expects to shake down enough to start us housekeeping, but, of course, that is strictly under your hat, and I pray you do not mention it. I think we can get Mr. Erlanger to let us use the New York Theatre if we promise not to damage the fixtures. He lets every other benefit have it and he certainly wouldn't object to a few poor chorus girls pulling off a shindy, seeing as how they did so much for his success.

"Suppose none of us had gone on in the chorus of 'Ben-Hur'? Just think what would have happened. Didn't know there was a chorus in 'Ben-Hur'? Say, what are you trying to do, kid me, or just show me a good time?

"I was around yesterday trying to get some of the oldtime merry-merry who are now some of our leading actresses to appear at the benefit, but they all threw a fit at the mere mention of the fact that they had once carried a spear. For my part I see nothing degrading in the work, even if we are held up to the gibes and chaff of some of these newspaper near-humorists.

"It certainly is an honorable calling, and if you look good from the front you can always have your pick of the menu. So that any dame that can hand out the frightened fawn glance need never starve.

"Ain't it funny the way these Johns stick their noses to the ground and start on the trail of 'the soldiers, villagers, etc.'? They'll pass up anything just to be able to stick their arm through the stage door and hand the doorkeeper a bunch of violets.

"They will leave Flossie, the belle of the village, waiting at the gate any time a burlesque three-sheet shows up on the side of the blacksmith shop. And right down front, with their feet on the base drum, handing out the coy glances before the first curtain is a foot from the stage.

"Yep, I'm still rehearsing with 'The Mangled Doughnut,' and the author of the book told me yesterday, in the strictest confidence, that it will be the best first-night performance Hartford ever saw.

"He says he expects to stay up all that night rewriting the book, but he is willing to sacrifice a few hours' sleep in the interest of Art. And for the musical numbers, as we are rehearsing forty-two songs, some of them ought to go. The only thing wrong with the show as far as I can see is that the prima donna acts like she was in a trance. It is my personal opinion—of course I wouldn't have you breathe this to a living soul for worlds—but it is my personal opinion that she sniffs the white. She either does that or jabs, though it don't show on her arm. The leading comedian is a sad affair.

"He would make a good understudy for a morgue, and that's about all. Why, I offered him suggestions for some new business in his cafe scene and he went up-stage on the run and informed me that when he desired instructions from the chorus concerning the way to handle his part he would address me in writing. I said to him: 'Far be it from me to get gay, old top, but I would respectfully suggest that you get busy with the pen and ink.' Then he was going to have me fired. Such a chance.

"He had better find out what I know about the past history of the person who hired me before he hands out any lurid language about my dismissal. I know right where I stand, and though I am one of the shop girls in the first act, instead of having my regular place as an American heiress, I know right where I stand every shake out of the box.

"Viola St. Clare is sure having the one strenuous time with her new husband. The poor dear is nearly balmy in the crumpet from worry. You see, they have been married but four long weeks, and the last three nights he has been coming home sober, and she believes he is deceiving her, so she is trying to get enough money from him so that she can hire a private detective to have him shadowed.

"They tell me that Sam Harris has to punch a time clock. I know one thing, and that is when I am married Wilbur will not be one of the leading lights of the Knickerbocker, even if I have to prance down there and drag him out by the neck. Gee, there ain't much doing in town now. Wilbur and a couple of friends are already running trial heats for the Twenty-three Club dinner, and if he ever recovers from that our engagement will be announced. I am having the photographs taken now.

"Tell me, do you think it's good form for a lady to have her wedding announcement accompanied by pictures of herself in tights. Wilbur says that it won't help me, but it will do the show a lot of good, and he says somebody connected with my show should be done good besides the manager.

"I will say one good word about our show—it has a grand first act. The other two acts may be on the cheese, but the first act is good. The author says the first act of a show is the only one that needs any attention, because it is the only one the critics ever stick for anyway. We got great scenery; the second act is made of what you might call a composite set, being composed out of all the scenery from the other failures this year.

"Did I say other failures?"

"I spoke inadvertently. 'For this elaborate production, with its all-star cast of metropolitan favorites and its famous beauty chorus,' as Wilbur says, may be all right.

"Mind you, I only say may.

"The first act is laid in a quince plantation, and the quinces of the chorus are discovered at curtain rise picking the luscious fruit. There is a naval vessel in the harbor. This was put in so the tenor could wear his white duck uniform; he had to wear something, and when the management found that he had a white duck uniform—every tenor has, you know, or he wouldn't be a tenor—when the management found that he had a uniform they took the money they had advanced for costumes away from him and rewrote the first act.

"As I say, we lemons are picking quinces or we quinces are picking lemons, any way you want to take it, and after finishing the opening chorus we rush up stage, open center, and in comes the prima donna in a pony cart—a stone boat would suit her better, but that is neither here nor there—see pony cart, chance for number by pony ballet, with six trained doughnuts—you see that's where the title of the play is introduced. That's the only time the title shows up except a duet between the leading lady and the tenor entitled 'I Had Rather be a Doughnut in Harlem Than a Butter Cake in Childs'.'

"The prima and the tenor do an imitation of the 'Merry Widow' waltz. The author didn't want that put in, but the backer of the show convinced him that nowadays every true musical comedy had an imitation of the 'Merry Widow' waltz, so he let it slide.

"After that in comes the comedian as the valet of a wealthy American just arrived on the battleship.

"He has got a great entrance. It's brought out by some plot lines spoken by two of the chorus girls that he has taken a taxaballoon from the boat and while up in the air he bites the rope of the balloon in two in a fit and falls center stage with a red spotlight on him. That's the musical cue for his song.

"'I'd Rather Be Up in the Air Than Up in the Bronx.' He has learned twenty-two extra verses and says that he will give them all if the ushers' hands hold out.

"When he is through in comes the soubrette, formerly a lady boilermaker in Canarsie, but now disguised as an adventuress, in search of the missing papers.

"She has the papers in a locket given her by her mother, but don't know it until the comedian bites her on the neck in the third act and breaks the chain, when the locket falls to the ground and the papers fall out.

"The second act is a scene in Maxim's, where the leading lady is washing dishes. That gives more comedy, with the comedian as a dish.

"The American is hiding from his wife and goes to Maxim's because he knows she'll be there. If she wasn't, shucks! There wouldn't be no show.

"He does his specialty with a piece of cheese—not the prima donna—and after that the American Beauty Chorus comes in and does a refined can-can.

"My how I have run on! I just know I'll be late for rehearsal, but don't forget the benefit. We need the money, Wilbur and me. So long!"



In which Sabrina prepares to leave town with the show, but pauses to pass a few remarks on love, comedians, murders, maids, spring millinery and the advisability of anyone marrying their first husband.



CHAPTER TWELVE

"Goodbye, dear," said Sabrina, as we met her hurrying up Broadway. "Our show leaves town to-morrow. We got to get to Hartford in time for a dress rehearsal before the evening performance. My, such a time we have had. You know the comedian we had threw up the sponge at the last minute and we had to dig up another. Thank goodness, this one is a gentleman and not getting fresh with the merry-merry every time he gets a chance.

"Oh, say, was you at the Friars' Sunday Night in Bohemia a couple of weeks ago? The Friars spend every night in Bohemia or the Knickerbocker bar, so Wilbur says. But honest, this was a great stunt, seconded only by the Festival they are going to pull off in May.

"The curtain went up on what looked like a busy day in Childs', and Wells Hawks was in the spotlight, surrounded by a bevy of blondes and empty champagne bottles. They tell me that Gus Edwards had to blindfold Hawks to lead him up to the table where the empty bottles were, and as for the girls, it was with a great effort that they restrained themselves.

"All they could do was to look at the empty bottles, hold their noses and drink mineral water. Ain't it awful, Mabel? Anyway, everybody had a good time, so what care they for gibes and jeers? Many the time have I held a champagne cork to my nose, closed my eyes and dreamed that I was having a time. Well, to continue about our show. Wilbur says it will never go, because they only got block stands, and an agent ain't got no show without at least one kind of a litho. Wilbur said it hurt the artistic instinct of a billposter in these hick towns to put up all block stands, and you generally have to slip them a little something to be sure that they burn up all the extra stuff, so that the manager of the company wouldn't find it should he go snooping around the bill room when the show gets in town. He says if they get a good litho of a killing or a chorus they will go out of the way to stick them up just for art's sake. Wilbur is going to give me a suit case full of hard tickets to the Friar Festival, and told me to mace every John I came across on the road for as many as he would stand for. He said the more I sent in the more he would know I loved him. Wilbur is so romantic!

"This new comedian we got with the show is pretty good, but of course I can see defects. And the new prima donna is real nice. She asked me into her dressing-room the other afternoon and slipped me a little idea encourager that she had in a flask. But the way she is in love with the tenor, honest, it's sickening to me. She watches him from the time he comes in the theatre until the time he leaves, and then calls him up on the 'phone at his home.

"The other day when he asked one of the girls to tie the ribbon in his cuff she got so jealous that I thought she was going to give the poor kid a lam on the lamp. What she can see in that tenor is beyond me. What anybody can see in a tenor has got me guessing, for that matter. Wilbur says that's just the way with temperamental people, and he lost a job once just because he forgot to land pictures in the Sunday editions of all the newspapers in town of the manager's own particular guiding star, but planted a bunch of her dearest friend instead. He says there's no pleasing them, and the only way to have peace and harmony around the whole show shop is to print flashlights of the entire company. And even that looks like blazes, for the editor will always reduce an eight-column flashlight to a two-column cut, no matter how many drinks you buy him.

"He says he saw a murder once—was the only witness, in fact—and he took it on the run to a newspaper office and offered to trade a Charles Sommerville to the editor for a reading notice about the show, and the editor told him that they could get all they wanted from the police, and what they didn't get wouldn't hurt the public if they didn't know about it. He says if that wouldn't give the press agent art a kick in the neck nothing would.

"Wilbur says he loves his art and nothing pleases him better than to find a box office that will take his I O U. Us chorus have been sure working hard the past week, and Ben Teal has been just that kind and gentle, and didn't put a one of us on the pan. We certainly have got some lovely costumes; they ain't much to them, but what there is is beautiful. They smell a little of camphor, but they have been packed away in hampers ever since last season, and that accounts for it.

"I got a fine scene with the comedian and should score a great personal triumph. All of us girls are lined up for his entrance in the second act, and when he comes in he walks right over to me and says: 'Ah, little one. How are you on the Queen's wedding day,' 'Queen's wedding day,' that's my cue, and I say, 'Very well, thank you kindly, noble sire.' Aint that great? It takes nearly a whole side. I was rehearsing it in my apartment this morning with Estelle, but she was so rotten as the comedian that I took away the last $5 I gave her for a tip.

"These menials have no talent in their souls. Estelle, that's my maid, says she has no desire to elevate the drama, and she had rather be a maid for a chorus girl any time—there's more money in it. She may be right at that.

"Alla McSweeney is going to start a New Thought Church. She says that she has a whole flock of new thoughts and it would be quite fashionable to start this new think stunt. She said she would tell us her new thoughts if she thought we would never breathe a word to a living breathing soul. Gee, that lets our gang out.

"They couldn't keep quiet if it killed them. Honest, for a bunch of knockers, perfect both in single handed knocking and team work, our set has anything bound to the bannister in New York.

"But what care I? Spring is coming and we will all soon hike to Bath Beach. Honest, for a country place with all the conveniences of home Bath Beach is the top liner. You can put a can under your shawl and rush a couple of blocks and always get it full of the best, and if you put butter around the side of the pail the barkeep ignores the fact and goes right ahead.

"I may get a motor boat this summer if Wilbur gets his summer snap at the island.

"Coney, I mean, not Blackwell's.

"He has never been over there except to take flowers to the Poillon sisters. They love nature so. Charlotte says it makes her homesick every time she sees a Joy Line boat go by.

"The benefit season will soon open and any person that has a couple of thousand dollars to pay for a theater can git a benefit for himself and maybe draw down a couple of hundred more. The benefit for the chorus, girls has gone up in the air, for none of them would acknowledge that they were chorus girls.

"They were either show girls or pony dancers, and that let them out. Anyway, each girl wanted to bring her maid, and the dressing rooms would have been so full of maids that there would have been no room for the dolls. I had it all framed up, too. I had six wine agents and a whisky salesman who guaranteed to appear, and that alone would have made the thing a financial success. But what could I do?

"Our bunch has been rehearsing five weeks without salaries, and with the excessive taxicab rates we got no money to spend on clothes to wear to the ball, and the wardrobe mistress keeps an awful tab on the costume hampers.

"A certain friend of mine, who, by the way, I wouldn't trust any further than I can throw an elephant by the tail, had the nerve to take me up in her apartment the other day and show me her new bathing suit she had just imported from Paris. It was a swell thing all right, but sewed in the waistband was a piece of cloth that said 'Burgomaster 2' on it, so you can draw your own conclusions.

"Honest, the way some girls steal is something awful. Take it from me, it's nothing less than stealing to swipe a wardrobe. Of course, if the show is going to close it's all right, but from a successful production, never. Lifting a scarfpin from a soused party is all right, for he is supposed to do something to remunerate the lady for wasting her time by taking her to supper.

"Spring has sure come and I do just glory in nature. I suppose that is because I was brought up in the country. We never have anything but nature in Emporia.

"Oh, I heard from the folks the other day, and they tell me that Emporia is now growing to be some town. The bank is putting up a four-story brick building, which is going to be looked on as the village skyscraper.

"The town council has already passed resolutions restricting the height of the buildings to six stories. They ain't going to take the chance that New York does, and have some of these big tall ten-story affairs topple over into their streets.

"All the yaps out in that neighborhood are lining out for the spring plowing now while the yaps here are lining out for the spring millinery openings. I already got the dressmaker on the job for seven or eight modest little frocks that will make them sit up and take notice Sundays down at Manhattan Beach.

"I have decided that I am going to be an athletic girl this summer, and am already taking exercise every day. Why, I walk all the way from the subway to the hotel, and that's nearly half a block.

"Say, what do you know about this? Posey Golden has married her first husband.

"Honest! You know they were divorced shortly after she got a good job, and have been living apart ever since.

"She married again to the nicest gambler you ever met. But he got stung on a sleeper, and had to hock the family jewels, and Posey said that was cruelty, for she could never have the face to go down to the dining room for breakfast without all of her diamonds on; she had worn them every day since they struck the St. Reckless, and she was afraid it might cause talk among the waiters and guests because she always treated them with a calm air of condescension, and they would lay for the chance to get in a hammer. So she put in a bid for a divorce and got it.

"Then she met her first better half on the street and, after having a little supper, they decided to sneak through the tunnel, take it on the run for Newark and again become one.

"Imagine anybody going to Newark to get married! Imagine any one going to Newark for anything!

"They got married and came back to town just as happy as if nothing had ever happened. My, I hope Wilbur and I will be that way! I think he is sincere even if he does write good notices about girls in his show.

"Well, I must toddle along and see if Wilbur has cashed his yet, so that I can get the rest of that new hat. If it ain't too much trouble you can send me a bunch of flowers for our opening night in Hartford. So long."



The show gives its opening performance and Sabrina scores a great personal success. She speaks at some length of the kissing craze and makes several comments on the time she had while out of town.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Are you coming to the opening tonight?" began Sabrina, the Show Girl, before she had given her order. "I don't know if you can get a seat or not, because the management is tired of having the same old gang out in front, and have donated about two-thirds of the house to the ladies at the Martha Washington, for they know more about a real show than anybody, because they read the dramatic page of all the fashion magazines, and the other third of the house will be taken up by the dramatic critics and their friends.

"We had a great opening in Hartford. The theatre was crowded four rows back. The first act went great, but we couldn't tell how the last one went, because nobody but the author and composer stayed for it, and they are a little partial.

"I scored a great personal triumph, and the way I read my lines was not only greeted with applause, but with laughter. In fact, I made such a decided hit that the prima donna, who, by the way, is worse than the first, because she drinks, had the manager take my lines away from me and give them to somebody who could not read them as well. If I wasn't afraid she would blackball me for the P.W.L. I would raise a kick. The idea of an old frump like that letting professional jealousy interfere with Art.

"After the performance that night the author got busy and rewrote the whole second act, and had it all ready by the time we landed in Washington.

"Do you think we get a chance to rush around and mingle with the Congressmen and other such truck? Not on your life. It was to the show shop for us and do the big rehearsal all day, and we only had time to slip out and soak up a sandwich and get back in time for the evening's performance.

"I changed my tights from blue to pink for the first night and scored another personal triumph. So much so that the soubrette made it a point to stand in front of me every time she did a number with the chorus. She belonged over on the other side in front of the Glonesganes creature, in order to dress the stage, and the manager jumped all over her for moving.

"The show went big that night, and the next day some of the critics spoke favorably of it. I don't care what they say, it's a good show, and as the plot has been almost entirely eliminated it should go well here.

"After rehearsing all day Tuesday we were allowed to walk up and down Pennsylvania avenue and get acquainted. I met a gentleman who said he had been introduced to me in New York, and he certainly treated me grand. We went over to the Willard for supper, and he just tossed the menu toward me, careless like, and said, 'Got to it, kid.' Talk about your Southern gallantry! A bunch of these near-sports will rush a girl into a feedshop, and they have no more than got seated at the table before he will commence talking about the big dinner he has just had, so that the poor thing feels like a burglar if she eats anything more than a couple of lobsters. But not this Percival, he frankly admitted that he hadn't had anything to eat for a week and scratched no entries.

"I wish these New Yorkers were that way—nothing personal dear—but they have become so callous to feeding the merry-merry that they have the big eat dodging stunt down to a science. The only way to get more than a two-dollar, including wine, feed out of most of these moss-covered pocketbooks is by blasting.

"Why, I have known certain parties to adopt the subterfuge of going out to telephone and then beating it to avoid paying the check. Thus leaving the poor feedee to pay the bill or wait longingly for a friend to show up on the horizon.

"A gentleman who will pull off a deal like that is not worthy of the confidence of one of our sex. But, understand, I am not by any means damning the whole male sex, for I have met gentlemen who threw the lid of their grouch bag in the gutter and didn't care if they ever found it again. Those is the kind of parties that has my trust. Me grub, and I got money in the bank? Sure I do. I got to keep in training somehow, so if I did lose my inheritance I wouldn't be out of practice.

"Wilbur don't blame me for it. He says that the object in life of an agent and a chorus girl is to plant everything they can get their fins into whenever they can, for it don't last long, and the good people ain't healthy. And goodness knows I sure do need my health. For though I appear to be a strong, robust creature I am a frail woman.

"Wilbur can moan and groan around with a hangover for a couple of days, but I have to be right on the job all the time with this smiling face and laughing eye thing, or he would seek some other place for sympathy. Why, many a morning I have spoke light and happy words of cheer to him over the 'phone with a tongue as thick as a board-walk and the inside of my nob yearning to burst loose and flop around in the cool morning air.

"Do I caper up to the transmitter and sob, 'Oh, darling, I fear me that I am not long for this earth!' Never! I take a long drink of ice water, and when his 'Is this you, kid?' comes over the wire I chirrup back, real bright and gay, 'Right O, Kiddo!' and when he says he don't believe he can live through the day, do I suggest that we die together? Not I! I tell him to forget it and go downstairs and have George mix him up a mug full of the hair of the dog that bit him. That shows the love of a good woman.

"Was you at the Chorus Girls' Ball last Saturday night? My, I would hate to cast any reflections on the judges, but their choice certainly was bum. Still I suppose they are old men and not up on the modern 1908 rules on osculation.

"In their day when a young man imprinted a chaste salute on a dame's alabaster forehead he was supposed to go into a fit of delight, but not according to this year's book. Now they clinch with a strangle hold and stick till one or the other drops from exhaustion. I did not enter the contest, for I am not a chorus girl; I am a show girl, if you please. What's the difference? Five a week.

"This kissing craze is getting to be something scandalous. Not that I object to it. But I blush to think that the time-honored customs that were once performed in the front parlor, with the gas turned low, is now used in contests and numbered as a feat of strength.

"Wilbur and I went to the ball together, and as soon as he struck the hut he wanted to rush right over and run a few trial heats with the contestants, but the easy way with which I made him change his mind was a joy to the eye. He said to me as we went in the door, I think I will toddle over to the paddock and see if the fillies are in form. He was making a wild rush to check his shawl when I mentioned casual like, as if I wasn't noticing myself saying it, 'You know that I am an added starter.' Bing! Skyrockets! Wilbur goes up in the air and comes down all spraddled out.

"'What!' he pipes, as soon as he got his breath, 'my financed bride billed to appear in a hugging handicap? Not yet! Sabrina you certainly do jag my jib to think that you would enter into such a deal. From now on our trail parts.' 'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and if you pull off any stunts you can figure that I will be in the running. And that goes as it lays.'

"That was no nice language for a lady, but it put the brakes on Wilbur's osculatory aspirations so quick that he stopped with a jolt. He canceled the date and we went up into the box and stood in the receiving line for wine agents.

"Wilbur knew that he had to stand hitched or I wouldn't let him go to the Twenty-three Club dinner tonight. He has been training for the event for the last two weeks, and he says that he will be able to outdistance the bunch before 4 a.m., and you know that's going some.

"It's a pity they wouldn't let us women in on their feed deals. They go out and fill up on beefsteak while we have to stick around and drown our sorrows in a cheese sandwich. And goodness knows that while they are nourishing they don't give you any new ideas.

"I only hope our show is a success, for if Wilbur and I get married every penny will help, and I don't want to lance my personal fresh air fund for anything more than a bridal veil. Wilbur and I are just like two doves, but I am taking no chances, for press agents are fickle people.

"With all due regard to Wilbur's feelings I must say that the agent of our company is a dog. He had the nerve to come up to us girls and want us to beat it up and down Broadway with signs boosting the show on our backs. A doll would stand a swell chance in Jack's with a big sign reading, 'Go see 'The Abused Cruller' at the Folly' on her vertebrae, now wouldn't she?

"Can you see me as the walking three-sheet? I make exhibition enough of myself on the stage without prancing up and down with one of those things tied to my Fluffy Ruffles.

"I just had an awful time in Washington. One of the girls that dresses in the same room with me came in with one of those crying buns on and shed so many weeps in my makeup box that I had to put it on with an atomizer.

"I did all a human being could do to bring her to—rubbed her hands and slapped her face; but even then she was in no fit condition to appear. Go on she would, in spite of my prayers, and what does she do when she comes tripping on, blithe and gay as a school girl, but stumble and do a slide on her profile half way across the O.P. side, just as the tenor was starting the chorus to his song, 'Bevey in Little Children.' He being a nervous party springs a blue note that got the musical director hysterical and he forgot to give the bass drum man his cue and the whole thing went to blazes.

"It was lucky that the stage manager was making a date on the dressing room stairs, or what she would have got would have been a-plenty.

"You know Laura O'Toole who was married a few weeks ago? Well, she is again a widow. Her husband got a job with a road show. She was thinking of wearing mourning, but her husband staked her to the price of a new spring suit and she said that conventionalities could go hang, as she had a shape and was going to show it. I don't blame her. Why let grief put it on style?

"Gee, it won't be long before summer, and then we will get our salaries reduced. That's the trouble with the people I work for. Every time they get a success here in town they start to reduce salaries. If the company would stand for it we would be owing them money every week before the end of the season. They think a girl hasn't nothing to do but ride around in an automobile and look sweet.

"Well, me to get on the war paint. Say, have you offered your services for the Friar Festival yet? Well, you had better get on the job if you want to consider yourself classy. So long! Oh, you know the ushers will hand flowers over the footlights if you just tell him who they are for. Bye-bye."



The show opens on Broadway and Sabrina shows surprise at the number of harsh words in the English language. She discloses the methods of the Lease Breakers Association and mentions the events that transpired at a little informal gathering.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"My, did you see what the critics said about our show?" exclaimed Sabrina, Show Girl, as her maid opened the door. "Wasn't it awful? I didn't know there were so many mean words in the book. And the nerve of them to pan me after meeting several of them socially. One of them said that I looked so good standing up that it was a crime to have me sit down, but when I spoke for goodness sake get the muffler. The mut! I should go down and horsewhip him. But no, that's what us people that figure in public are bound to get. They never say a good word until after the minister says, 'Dust thou art to dust returneth,' and then some cluck is liable to come along and dig up a bunch of letters.

"I am thinking seriously of taking a flat until summer. I don't like this hotel, one has to keep so many conventionalities. Why, the other day my 'phone was out of order and I ran down to the desk in my kimona to telephone and the clerk had the nerve to call me for it. Can you surpass that? I told him to open his ears and let his head cool off.

"I was looking at a nice flat the other day, but they want me to sign a lease. What do I know about a lease? There ain't no half salary clause in it. If I did sign the lease and want to beat it all I would do would be to call in the Lease Breakers' Association and I could leave the next day. That mob responds to a call like the crowd in the Cadillac when some one says, I'll buy,' and you can take it from me that's going some.

"Sure, haven't you heard of the Lease Breakers' Association? They guarantee to break any lease in less than a week. It is composed of a mob of select ladies and gentlemen who can make the most noise. A person wishing to leave their abode and handicapped with a lease has but to blow the whistle for this gang and furnish plenty of refreshments and there is nothing to it. I attended one the other evening and we all had the one grand time.

"A friend of mine has ceased being married and naturally has no more use for a whole flat, so she approached the cruel landlord and asked for a release. Did she get it? Not. He told her that she would have to stick or stand the consequences. Does she tear out a bunch of hair and rave all over the room? Not her. She gets the members of the Lease Breakers on the 'phone and that night they hold the big celebration and the next morning four tenants kicked to the landlord. The morning after that the whole building kicked in a body and the janitor had to repair two ceilings. Then the guv asked her to move and she refused until he gave up her month's rent. She was foolish like one of those birds they call a fox. I guess, yes. These landlords have to go some if they want to get ahead of the simple Bohemians. What they want rent for beats me. They own the houses and that ought to satisfy them.

"If I do get this flat, take it from me, we will pull off the grand one time. I intend to hold a reception every evening after the show until I get a request to move.

"Say, here's the big jest in our set. You know, Olga Jones and her husband don't get along very well together. Their temperaments don't jibe.

"Well, her soul mate and she had given hubby the slip and were down in my apartments putting on the finishing touches to the big eats. Soul Mate was telling the story of his life to Olga when in kicks the dame that Soul Mate had formerly been in love with.

"They are both wise people and neither tip their mit, though Soul Mate grew restless with his feet. This was about 4 a.m. and the mere shank of the evening, as it were. When all of a sudden, Bing! Bing! on the door and in waltzed Olga's handicap, who had been out and soaked up a souse, and not finding little wifey when he returned to the hut, he starts out on a still hunt and ropes in my shack.

"Hubby comes in carrying weight for grouch and pipes party of five—Blonde Party, Olga, Soul Mate, Wilbur and me. Calls down wifey for not coming home. Business of language. I kick in and tells him to have a drink. Nothing to it. Oil on the troubled waters looked like an also ran.

"Hubby was perfectly content and after a drink or two he beat it, telling wifey to hurry home. Fine. Blonde Party finds she is fifth wheel and also ducks. Then Olga lands on Soul Mate. 'Who is this peroxide party?'

"'Only an old passing fancy,' chirrups Soul Mate.

"Olga tears her hair and bites out a bunch of hectic language about having the only man she ever loved being false, and how life is naught but a hollow bubble and all that kind of rot. Wilbur having sporting blood was for kidding them on and seeing if they would mix it, but me desiring peace and quiet told what I didn't know about the affair and squared things. Business of embracing.

"Did you pipe the sassy half-sheets Mr. McManus got out for the Friar Festival? Ain't they just too pretty for words? Do you know who that guy reading the Friar song down in the corner is? Don't breathe a word and I'll tell you. It's Phil Mindel. Honest it is. George sketched it from life one night over at the Booze Arts.

"Us chorus girls were talking of marching to Albany in a body with drums beating and flags flying and demanding that the anti-betting bill be ditched. It is something fierce the way these reformers are trying to put the bee on our pleasures.

"I just dote on horse races. Why, I can go to the track and sit in the cafe for hours. I wonder what these guys think we are going to do with our spare time this summer? Sit at home and make sofa pillows? Why, there is no greater sport in the world than riding out to Sheepshead or Jamaica in an auto and then borrowing money from your escort to bet on the patty-pats. It's a great system. If you lose the John gets nothing, and if you win you take everything, so it is fair for all parties.

"If they want to do something truly noble they should put those moving picture shows out of business. Pretty soon when they want the chorus to show up they will let down a sheet, throw on the picture and turn loose, 'Welcome, your highness, welcome' on the phonograph. I ain't mentioning any names, but there is a bunch of these parties that belong on a moving picture.

"What do you know about the circus? Ain't it all to the pickles? Me there the other matinee in a real box, courtesy of the management. Did you get your attention called to the two Janes that did the ride in the hurdics down the hill? Some class to that act. Imagine looping the loop in the air! Not for Sabrina, the pride of the chorus. As long as I can make my living on my shape you don't catch me trying to damage it soaring around in the atmosphere. Not for five dollars more a week, as bad as I need the money.

"I went to see Wells Hawks and the elephants. Both of them are permanent fixtures, though they do say that he is kept busy looking after the animals at both the Hip. and the circus. And the clowns! May I be struck dead if I didn't just rear back and howl my head off at those crazy clucks.

"Alla McSweeney certainly is a sneeze. She has no idea of the fitness of things. I was telling her just the other day. I said, 'Alla, you certainly are no piker. You'll go out and mace a good fellow for a big feed just as if he was a John. Now, that ain't right. When you are out with a James go to it and eat your head off. But when you are out with some one in the business or a newspaper man be circumscribe. Though you may want to wade through the whole dope sheet hitch your desire and order what you think he can afford, and lay back until you get a live one.'

"What? Sure we do. If a Jane goes out with a John that has nothing but. Nothing's too good for her and walking is hard on the feet. The more money the wop spends the bigger sport he thinks he is, but a fellow professional has honorable intentions, sometimes, and it is considered wise not to show what you are accustomed to until after he has bought the ring or written some letters. I may go out with some fellow and order everything from soup to nuts just to show him that I can, but the way I won Wilbur's heart was by ordering a cheese sandwich the first time he invited me out.

"My goodness! How I run on, and here it is getting late. Well, I must toddle along and see how the Friar Festival is. I have a personal interest in that. So long. Say, the next time you expect to get lanced for the big feed tell her you were once in the business and it will save you money. Ta, ta."



In which Sabrina has a row with the stage-manager, leaves the show, frivols in the vineyard, denounces the male sex as being all alike, threatens, to take the veil, but finally falls upon the neck of her betrothed and all is forgotten.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We came upon Sabrina seated alone at a table in the rear of a cafe; her hat was tilted rakishly over one ear, a couple of strands of hair were hanging down over her forehead, a bright spot glowed on each cheek and her eyes had a dim, moist appearance. The table was covered with glasses and bottles and the chairs looked as if they had been hastily shoved back.

As we approached her she waved her hand joyfully and exclaimed, 'Welcome bri' Springtime. Wel-come to our country village. You—you behold in me the only living survivor of the wreck of the Hesperus. Parade ri' up, and give the waiter your hat, coat and vest and bevy in. Though I have just given nineteen dollars' worth of hair puffs away as sou-sou-ven—you say it, I feel like a new born child. Once again I am care fre' and heart fre'. Tra la la la le. I have just decorated Wilbur with the sacred order of the bee and I—hurray! hurray!—am no longer a near-bride. Take it fr'm muh I feel so happy I don' care if I get spots all over the fron' of my waist. I feel like a lark. Yes shur, a bottled-in-bond lark. Whatever that ish. An' I still got the engagemen' ring at that.

"Waiter! Waiter! Garsong! Thish gentleman has a few words to shay to you, an' don' take no for an answer. Oh, yes, you arch your eyebrows in sus-sus-picioning and shay that I have been two-stepping around the juniper bowl and I will answer, 'Right O!' Just like that.

"I make it a rule to cel'brate all suspicious occasions by revelry and goo' cheer. Oh, won' I have a head in the morning! But now.

"Behold I appear as Columbine! I toil not neither do I spin. Listen, my dear. The last two days have been fraught—whatever that is—with incidences that would bring gray hairs to the head of much stronger women than I.

"It came off last night. I was out to supper with a couple of gentlemen—Wilbur and an-another gent. We were so busy talking things over that I didn't get to the theater until the middle of the first act. My, I never saw a man so peevish as that stage manager. I had no more than exchanged the courtesies of the day with the stage doorkeeper and asked after his sick child than that mut-faced sneeze that calls himself a stage manager had the nerve to rush up an fine me five dollars. Wha'da you think of that?

"I told him that I positively refused to appear the rest of the evening. Then he told me that I was fired? What do you know about that? I said, calm and dignified, like the perfec' lady I am, 'All ri', you can do as you please with your old show, I don't care, I don't care, nothing bothers me,' and with those kind words I caper up to the dressing room and take that expensive gown I wear in the third act and stuck it in the wash bowl and turned on the water. It needed cleaning anyway. Then I put a few things that oughta belong to me in my makeup box and beat it.

"I had to kiss everybody in the company goo' bye and that made the stage wait and the manager came chasing around without any goat and tol' me never to darken his door again. That's all ri' with muh. His blooming door was dark enough anyway. Then I waltz back to where Wilbur and the gentleman are and break the news. Wilbur gets sore, for since I commenced wearing those pink tights he doped out a great dramatic career for me. And naturally he was vexed. For he saw no show of being able to lay off work.

"Wilbur started to chide me. I was in too gra' a nervousness state to be chid' an' I tol' him sho. Did he have compassion and pity on muh in my vis-vis-situdes? No! Abso-o-o-lutely no! I says all ri' old top, if you look at it that way I guess I can bear up through the heat of the day without your assistance, an' if it's just the same to you I will toddle ri' along and peddle my matches.

"Wilbur pricks up his ears at those few words and tries to copper his remarks, but not for a minute could I see through the fog.

"I just gather up my skirt and sweep majestically out of the room, jump into taxicab and proceed to hunt pleasure and relaxation. What do you know about that?

"Ah! here is the little waiter with his shining morning face. Get me another one of the same and keep your eagle eye on these gentlemen's mugs and see that they do not get dry. Say, take it from me, if I felt any better I'd break out in a rash. I abso-o-o-o-lutely have no regard for the future. I don' care whether school keeps or not, and Curfew can ring her young head off for all I care. I am going to make old Omar feel like a temperance lecturer before I get through this celebration. I am willing to drink everything but 'Merry Widow' cocktails, for they make you want to steal your own clothes.

"I was expecting to enjoy a box at Ted Marks' big pow-wow at the New York this afternoon, but I fear me at about that time the only thing I will be in condition to attend will be the usual hang-over party in the Metropole.

"Mr. Marks is sure the one clever party. He's going to organize a club called 'The Human Nightkeys.' Any one that goes to bed before daylight is barred. Lee Harrison offered his services as sergeant-of-arms to see that the rule is observed.

"Now that Summer is coming on this sleep question is getting shoved off in a dark corner by itself. It always was a waste of time.

"I don't care a whoop for the best man that breathes and now that I have slipped Wilbur the go'-by I shall never fall in love with one of his sex again. Tell muh, do I look all ri'. I haven't detailed the rest of this adventure, have I? Well, I left Wilbur and met a nice quiet party that was singing 'We're Afraid to Go Home in the Dark' over in Jack's and I at once began to mingle. They were all good fellows, so I nearly gave them heart trouble by ordering wine for the crowd.

"I will not endeavor to chronicle the amount of lush I tucked away. I will only state that if I had not been a good friend to the bell hops I never would have gotten upstairs.

"Estelle, that's muh maid, was sitting up with her face to the pane waiting for me to come home, and just to show her how grateful I was I gave her all of Wilbur's pictures and all the change I had in my stocking. Waiter, you are forgetting your duties in part.

"I finally got to bed and then I pulled off the big cry. Booze, you understand, and not because I lost that hot-air shooting, lush-working, expense-account-grubbing wah of a Wilbur. I should say not. Don't think that I wear pink tights and can't get the best man that ever breathed.

"I am not a bit like that Glonesganes creature. Why, she actually throws herself at the head of every man she meets. Honest, you can't take her out to supper in a crowd before she's engaged to some two or three in the party. Fact. Ask any of the girls. We all swore to tell the same story about her.

"Am I going back on the stage. Well, I should hope so, dear. What do you think I would do with myself if I didn't have to beat it to the shop at least once a day. I tried it once when I first got my fortune, but life became so monotonous and I got so fat that I had to start rehearsing in order to get back to my former self.

"Say, I think the last dipperful made me feel better. Waiter, come out of your trance. Gee, but I do feel great.

"Won't you all have a little something to eat. A steak smothered in pickles or something like that. Go as far as you like. You know I ain't that kind of a girl. When I'm treating there's no entries scratched. Go ahead do as you please. I ain't going to get married, so I don't have to save my money.

"You just watch Wilbur hedge. I got spies out and they say he's been in every cafe in town looking for me. Wants to make up. Watch little birdie here. If he comes monkeying around me again I'll pick up one of these and knock him clean out from under his hat. Trifler. How I ever fell for him certainly gets me. How anybody could love a press agent or an actor gets me for that matter. I have been crossed in love and am running no more chances.

"I shall never get married. Never! That statement is for publication. I shall live in peace and quiet near some good cafe and drown my old age in mixed drinks.

"You needn't think I am soused, but I am going to tell you this. Unless Wilbur and I make up the Friar Festival will have to get along without my services. Why, I got every John in town so bunked that every time they see me coming they take it on the run for some place that I can't get to 'em, 'cause I lance 'em for a pair of seats every time our trails cross.

"I lost eight dinner engagements last week just on that account and what do I get for it? Ice water. That's all.

"Wilbur rushes up and demands more seats and the committee thinks he is having an awful rush of business and its muh with my shoulder to the wheel. I had a run in with Wilbur already about the Friar Girl that Harrison Fisher drew on the front of the programme. Wilbur told me that I could have the job and I finds out that he told everybody in the company the same thing. Press agents is crafty people. And he can play both ends against the middle in a manner that would make your hair curl.

"I don't care! I don't care! Wilbur can run and make faces at himself. Nothing bothers muh. Waiter, are you asleep at the switch? I am no longer a fiancee. I am a free woman.

"Say, what'yer going to do 'morrow? Let's get one of these taxicab things and see if we can't run it to death.

"I never found the limit yet on one of those gasmeter attachments, an' I am the inquisitive soul. Line out to Claremont or some of those foolish places. Sure, we'll start early, about noon, and enjoy the beautiful Spring-air and highballs. Are you on? Sure I'll be there with my hair in a braid. I am the Rural Kid these days and a stunt like that suits me from the ground up.

"Who is that coming in the door? Why, its Wilbur! He sees me! Do I look all ri'? Here, Wilbur, here. Sit down and have a drink, dear, I have been looking for you everywhere. Forget that deal last night. So long fellows. Waiter give me the check; I don't care what becomes of my money now."



Sabrina gives an automobile party to several of her friends so that they may enjoy the country air, but after investigating the atmosphere carefully the opinion of the entire party is that the only healthful ozone is that that comes out of a champagne bottle.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Where you all going?" demanded a voice, and looking around we discovered Sabrina, the Show Girl, and two of her girl friends seated in a big red automobile that was drawn up to the curb. "Come on, jump in," she continued. "We are out to commune with nature for a few minutes and you might just as well be a commuter as the rest of us. Ain't this the one grand weather?

"No, you sit back here. We will make Wilbur sit up in front so that we can see he don't grub the eats. He's inside lancing the management for a group of free lunch and a package of liquid refreshments. Here he comes now. Bless his young heart he's got his arms full. Ain't it grand to be loved by such a man?

"No, Wilbur, you get up in the hurricane deck and we all will sit in the caboose. Have we got everything? Alla, did you forget the hot-water bag full of cracked ice for the champagne? Now, let's see where shall we go first to get the most nature? We can stop at the Cadillac, the Circle, the Casino in the Park and then make a quick jump to Claremont.

"In that way we can get some of the delightful Spring air and not be far from a head waiter at any time. Thats right, Sadie, you big gump, put your feet on the crackers. Those were bought to eat and not to be used as a door mat. Still, if you must wipe your feet we can print 'Welcome' on one of the crackers and you can clean your Dorothy Dodds till you are black in the face.

"Is everything ready? Do I look all right? Wilbur, give the motorman two bells. Look out, there! There goes Er Lawshe with a plaster cast of Genee under his arm. Do you want to make him drop it and break his heart?

"Sadie, it is not necessary to give the furtive glance to every gentleman who admires the machine. Go ahead and see if you can't scrape the paint off the cop. Alla, my dear, you know it isn't necessary to start eating now, you'll get yours, and besides several of the places we will stop at have free lunches, so you can have all that you are accustomed to without making inroads on the provision supply at this stage of the game.

"What 'a we got in the larder? Fifteen bottles and 10 cents' worth of crackers. My! it seems to me you are squandering an awful lot of money on food. Of course, if we get shipwrecked or something they may come in handy, but at present writing they are excess baggage.

"Whoa, chauffeur! Don't you see that bock beer sign? Whenever you see one of those turn the corner and stop at the family entrance. Hitch the machine and we will all soon see what mine host has in the way of nourishment. Sadie, it is not necessary to show such unseeming haste, as it is now but early noon and the place does not close until after midnight.

"This is a low-browed dump, but any port in a storm, as the poets say. As I am directing this Cook's tour we will have but one drink here.

"Wilbur, how do you know that the bar-keeps name is George? Have you been false to me and been here with another? Bartenders are called George just like Chinamen are called John? What are you trying to bale out to me? Do you think I am a boob?

"Now, Alla, go to it and quench your thirst, for it may be several blocks before we stop again. My, ain't this warm weather glorious! It makes one so thirsty. Come, people, let's get back in the herdic, for we have a long journey ahead of us.

"There you go again, Sadie. Stepping all over the crackers. Before we get through we will have to take them in capsules. Look out for that car! Gee, those cars are bad enough without being mashed up more by some sneeze wagon. Certainly we'll go through the Fifth avenue entrance to the park. I may be some things, but I am no piker, and, besides, we got as much license as anybody. I remember when I used to go horseback riding through here every morning and I always had my groom in a beautiful red livery following me. I had the most beautiful black horse and an elegant riding habit. Why, there wasn't a day but what I was invited out to lunch. Sadie, that was very uncalled for. I am in no trance. You, of course, not being accustomed to those things, naturally look upon those people who were brought up on such stuff as balloon juice merchants. Maybe that will make you stand hitched.

"Look at that hearse go by us. Driver, if you are any good you will make that outfit look as if they were bound to the bannister.

"That's right, give them a touch of high life. Zow-e, if we are going less than a mile a minute I hope I have to walk home. Cheese, there's a bike cop. Can you loose him? Beat it. Good-by, Bobby. Look out, there's another one in front. Slow up, for goodness sake, or we will be pinched. What is it, sergeant? Oh, no, sir. Not more than six miles an hour, I am sure.

"This machine has got a dudedad on it that prevents it from going more than ten. Won't you have a little drink, officer? Just smile on the gent in the front seat; he's right there with the distillery. Wilbur, chase the roof off a jug of suds for the Lieutenant. I tell you, Captain, on my honor as a lady, we are not going more that six miles an hour. Must take us to the station! Why, you low-down, monkey-faced excuse for a sparrow cop, would you have the crust to stand up in front of a judge and tell him that we were going faster than ten miles an hour? If you want to get us to the station it's a cinch you will have to push the machine. Walk! Not so you could notice it. The only way you can get me there is to drag me by the hair of my head, and if you dare lay your mitts on my new marcel wave I will report you to your Commissioner, and if a certain friend of mine don't stand strong enough with him to have you broke, I'll eat my ostrich plume!

"Will let us go if we promise not to do it again? Why, certainly we won't, Sergeant. Thank you, Lieutenant. Here's a little something for the Relief Fund. Good-by, Captain. Wilbur give the driver two bells. The nerve of that guy thinking he could pinch me. I'll have you know that I am only nicked by the best cops on Broadway, and not by any high-grass constable. Hand 'em salve, pardy, hand 'em salve. A soft answer turneth away wrath. If that don't turn the trick use a brick.

"Oh, gee, there it is. Go around and come up the other side so we can be seen from all the tables.

"Let's take this table. Waiter, get on the job, as these gentlemen and ladies wish to address a few remarks to you. Oh, there's Grace McSweeney. Pipe the hat she is sporting. Bum taste, it strikes me. Who is that slob with her? Oh, hello, dear! I was just speaking of your new hat to Sadie. We both admired it so.

"We were wondering how you could wear it coming up on the Subway. I've found that the wind blows them all to pieces in my car. Who's the wop? From Pittsburg? Oh, is that so? He reminds me so much of a very dear friend of mine that was sent up for life. No, I suppose it's not the same party, though they are as alike as two peas. No, I don't care to meet him. You know one in my position cannot afford to associate with every Tom, Dick and Harry. Must you toddle? Good-by, dear.

"Cat! Did you get wise to the way I slipped her the sassy roast? Well, here's down the Irish channel. Varlet, fill up the flagons again. I just love to sit here and look out at Nature and the railroad tracks and the brick scows.

"Where do we go from here? You made me think I was back in the business. Oh, I don't care. Yonkers, over in Westchester County, or we can take the ferry for Jersey if you want to go out in the wilderness. It makes not an iota of difference to muh. Just as long as the chauffeur stays sober. Shall we hike? Lets slip up the drive for a ways. Sadie, are you ever going to have sense enough to keep your hoofs off those crackers? Honest, I don't believe your think tank is feeding properly. Why don't you blow in it and clear it out?

"Sure, I'll caper out to Yonkers if the rest of the crowd want to. I am just that kind of a fellow. Ain't I, Wilbur, dear? Oh, my, don't for mercy sakes disturb him. He's hunting locations for the Friar three-sheets that Mr. Gillen slipped 'em. He's got Mr. McManus' art studies planted now so that the burg looks like a Kansas town the day after the number two car of the circus leaves.

"Did you know that they are enlarging the secret tunnel in the new Friary so that Toxen Worm can get his getaway if the occasion should arise? Honest, it looks like the front view of the Hoboken tunnel. Oh, law me, what is that in the offening? Eureka! It's another cafe, or do muh eyes deceive me? I am athirst, let us rest our weary beast and partake of a flagon of nut brown ale. Say, I guess I would be bad in this Shakespeare thing. Alight, fair maids, and nominate your idea provokers.

"Waiter, follow those people's directions and do not let the mice build nests under your feet. Sink this and we will then continue our journey.

"Now, Sadie, as a friend I ask you don't do a ballet on them crackers. Run over the mutt. What care we for life. Gee, the canine is right there as the artful dodger. Ah! what? Bing! What was that? A puncture! My! For goodness sake, how long will we be bogged down. Oh, we can wait that long, can't we, dears? Pipe the yokel. Shall I hand him a game of chatter? No? Oh, very well.

"Let's have a picnic. Wilbur, get on the job and skid out the liquids. Alla, you may bring out what is left of the crackers. If that woman hasn't paraded over them biscuits until there isn't a piece there big enough to make a nice comfortable mouthful for a young flea.

"Throw 'em away, we don't want to overload our stomachs anyhow. Can you surpass that for a man. Here we've come all these weary miles carefully nursing these bottles to our bosoms and then that excuse there has the crust to speak up and say, 'I forgot the corkscrew.' Can you beat it? Wilbur, you just get on the job and pull them out with your teeth. Get away, you big standup and fall down, I'll show you how to get them out. What do you think us fair sex wear hat pins for, hey, shover? Want some of this jig juice for your tire? Right-o! Ain't I the English scamp? Got her fixed all right? Climb in, folks, and we will journey homeward, for I am beginning to feel thirsty and you certainly don't get the same treatment here that you do in town. Sadie, now that the crackers are gone I wish you would please remember that that is my foot. Say, you can never learn some of these dolls nothing. Nothing personal, my dear, though your hair is light.

"Don't you dish me out any hectic language, for I am a lady. I might forget myself and smear one all over you. Wilbur, are you going to sit up there and see your near-bride insulted by a woman? If you don't come back here and make her stop abusing me I'll take and bump your two hearts together. Now that goes if you hear it and I am speaking in no whisper.

"Can that fight talk even if this is a pleasure party. My, how time does fly! We are nearly home now. Let's all go down the street and see what's doing. Must you leave us? Don't rush away in the heat of the forenoon. So long. My, I am glad that man's out of the machine!"



Sabrina, in spite of the anti-betting law, goes to the race track and returns with money. She also drops a few remarks concerning gentlemen who claim their scarf-pins have been purloined by ladies.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Them Senators that put the kibosh on that racetrack bill can consider themselves as personal friends of every chorus Fluff that ever scanned a dope sheet," remarked Sabrina, the Show Girl, as she alighted from a new big automobile. "Pipe the ferry-boat. It's all mine; name on every piece. And I am personally thankful to those gents that I am the proud possessor of the same.

"Did I catch? Well, I should hope so, dear. I landed this buzz wagon out of a ten dollar pike bet. Can you surpass it? Talk about playing in luck. Wait until I touch wood. Wilbur says betting on the races beats trifling with the affections of an expense account all to pieces.

"You know that, though I lead a simple and uneventful existence, the inheritance that was left me was pretty near all in, and it was either up to me to get married, get a job on one of the roofs or catch a live one, and I thought the best of all the evils was to catch the aforementioned live one. I am not one of these Janes that goes dotty over the pit-i-pats, and though I always sit up until The Morning Telegraph comes out on the street, the racing news is not the first thing I turn to.

"Wilbur's show closes in a couple of weeks and he is going to the island for the summer. Can that old stuff. I mean Coney, not Blackwell's. I been piking around for a hunch for some time, and just the other evening I was out with a party who is interested in the bet placing business at all of the big tracks, and he said he was hep to a few killings, and any time I would come out he would give them to me and I could play the other books.

"Knowing that he had influence, I naturally took an interest in him, but, say, this is a long, sad story and—. Ah, certainly! I knew you could not suppress your Southern hospitality much longer—that is, I hoped you couldn't. Yes, waiter; bring me a long one.

"Well, I took a peep at my check-book about a week ago and decided that it was me for the track. I meets this wop and he certainly lands me in right. He gives me a twenty case note and the card. I got the twenty changed and plants ten of it in the Lisle Thread Bank, making up my mind that no matter what happened the day would not be ill-spent.

"I plays his tip at 8 to 1 on the first race and ketches. Out of that ninety I plant forty. Still following the kind gentleman's advice I pikes the fifty on a dog in the second race and he never does come in.

"Can you beat that? This betting person picks the whole card but this one race. I lose my fifty and was thinking seriously of going home when I got a yen to try it again, so I dug up a twenty out of the hose. Honest, it nearly broke my heart to separate myself from that roll, but I just had to do it. I get twenty to one, go into hysterics at the quarter, faint at the half, but come to in time to see my money coming in so far ahead it looked as if he was out for a pleasure trip. Can you see me with that 400 in my mit? Talk about throwing fits. Why, I had the Leamy Ladies looking like children romping on the nursery floor.

"There was nothing to it. I had a hunch to grab the bundle and beat it for home and crawl under the bed. And then I had another hunch that told me to stick for the big show. I plant one century in my war bag and get seven to two on the next with the other three. I win.

"Then I do want to go home. I felt ill.

"But just then a gentleman introduced himself to me and we went and had a little drink. That made me feel better, and so I ditched the purveyor of refreshments and fled to the clubhouse. There is nothing more to tell except that I couldn't lose and I came home in an automobile with my clothes so full of this evergreen stuff that I looked as if I had spavins or something else.

"I made $6,000 on the day, which is not so bad for a poor fluff like me. That night the gentleman who gave me the tips called me up and wanted his original twenty back, saying the public got all his roll. Can you beat that? I told him I thought he was a moonstone sport, and to never darken my door again.

"He needed money bad, and through a friend I let him have a couple of thou on this machine. Ain't I the business woman?

"Wilbur and I have just been riding ourselves to death ever since. He has been acting awful lately. Ever since he heard that Friar Weber and Friar Field were going to appear together at the festival he has been soused. It was all I could do to restrain him from kissing Phil Mindel in the Cadillac the other evening. He just don't care what he does.

"Have you bought your tickets? Let me see. I have six choice ones here in the seventh row. You'll want to bring your family, of course, 'cause it will be the chance of a lifetime. Nothing like it seen before under one canvas. For stellar attractions it's going to have Barnum & Bailey's looking like a Sunday school entertainment. Yes, sir, and I personally will be there like the Trinity chimes.

"Alla McSweeney has gone and blown herself for one of these racecourse hats. You know these big things that have a half-mile track around the outside. While I do not wish to injure the poor dear, still I will say that she certainly looks one of these long-handled Jap umbrellas. You know she is such a skinny thing! Honest, this new hip style they are boosting this season just saved her life. She was getting saddle galls from carrying so many naturals. I wouldn't say this unless I absolutely knew, and of course I have seen her early in the morning when you haven't.

"There are little confidences us girls exchange in the privacy of our boudoirs that would never do for the ear of a man. She tried to get a job as one of those six-foot girls in 'The Love Waltz,' but the manager told her she had better go with a circus. She naturally queried 'Why?' And he, the rude thing, told her she could get a job as a quarter-pole. That's why she could never get a job with the Held show. She was all right in low neck, but when it came to tights! Well, you know bowlegs never did appeal to the front row.

"Mind you, I wouldn't say a thing that would hurt her character the least bit, but you should have seen the way she carried on when she was out in Chicago. You know that anyone who runs around with those La Salle street spendthrifts loses class, anyway, and she just tore around that North Side something scandalous, and till my dying day I never will forget the scene she and the comedian's wife had on the platform in that dear Peoria.

"Alla, bless her heart, she is a good soul, is a flighty creature and she accepted the attentions of the comedian which his wife was not supposed to be jerry to. But one day some gabby girl put wifey next. We were all down to the station waiting for the train to come in when up romps wifey to this doll, who is making the big talk with a chorus man—just shows you what extent she will go for company—she was talking to this chorus man and wifey capers up to her and says: 'You been flirting with my husband, haven't you?' And hauling off wifey hangs one on Alla's map that is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Bing goes Alla to the platform down and out. She was in such a trance that we had to rub her hands and borrow a drink from the press agent, who came back with the show to see if he couldn't get his salary, before she would come to. Pale, why that girl was so white that her number eighteen looked like big gobs of red paint on each cheek.

"I never saw a girl so surprised in my life. For the nonce she was nonplussed. She didn't know what to make of it. When she did you should have heard the language she used. It is not for me to tell it in a respectable crowd, for I only use it to Estelle, that's my maid, when she pulls my hair, but it was certainly not fit for publication in a family newspaper.

"She's continually getting into trouble. If it ain't one thing it's another. It's a wonder to me she hasn't been pinched oftener than she has.

"I never will forget one time she was out riding with a handsome gentleman from Pittsburg in a cab and while leaning on his shoulder his diamond scarfpin got caught in her teeth. She being a bashful young thing—then. Well, when she takes her head off his shoulder the pin naturally comes along, too, and then she got afraid that he would think she was trying to nick it so she stuck the pin in her hat band, intending to restore it on the way home. But in the next cafe they stopped in she picked a fight and left him in a huff. Would you believe it, that guy had the nerve to come around the next day and declare that she had pinched the bauble and threaten to land her in the booby hatch if she didn't come across.

"And they call that chivalry!

"No true gentleman would ever threaten to have a lady sent up.

"Did he get his pin? Well, I should say not. She threw such a strong bluff about suing him for defamation of character that he came across with two hundred cold to keep her quiet. But don't breathe this to a soul unless they promise not to tell. I wouldn't have it get out that I ever said anything about her for worlds, for, though we are the best of friends, I am leaving her no opening to hand me one.

"Don't think for a minute that I have a past I am afraid to bring before me. My fair young life has been as quiet and uneventful as an old mill stream. Fact. You see, still water runs deep and the race is not always to the swift. And goodness knows I would have no one say that about me. I'm a Bohemian, whatever that is. Lots of dames I know have pasts. Why, every time you mention Sid Eusons to Laura she nearly coughs up a spasm and to even breathe medicine show to a certain leading man I know he will immediately cut you off his calling list.

"The benefit business is not as prosperous this year as it has been heretofore. I know several parties that have actually lost money on them.

"Now that Lent is over I am going to have a good time. I always observe Lent some way. This year I swore off refusing drinks or suppers. Wilbur and I expect to be made one as soon as he locates his next season's job. He's got one in sight that looks pretty good.

"A certain party has signed for it, but Wilbur gets it if this party drops dead, so now Wilbur is following him around telling him that he looks poorly. We ought to be very happy when we get married, for Wilbur will be out ahead of a show all season and I will be here in New York. What more would a happy bridal couple desire?

"Well, I must toddle along, as the hour is late and my automobile is getting impatient.

"Be good, and don't forget that you promised on your word and honor to take six tickets for the Friar Festival from me. Say, party, if you need any change give me the office and I will slip it to you."