"Well, it was just for a minute!" she says. "I was playing with her, and then I thought maybe the crullers I had made was cool by then and I went and got a few and when I come back she was gone!"

"Well, she's got to be found, that's all!" I snapped. "All this comes from you insisting on keeping in with them low circus people and boarding their acts for them!"

"But Madame Estelle had to stay with her husband when he fell offen the trapeze and they so devoted!" says Ma. "And I didn't take the big snakes--the subst.i.tute is using them--but only her own dear pets which the landlady wouldn't leave her have in her room."

"And now one of them is loose in _my_ room!" I says, "which is the general result of charity which, as the poet says, had ought to begin at home," I says. "And you know, Ma, how I feel about snakes. There's n.o.body in the psycopathic ward got anything on me. If only they had even a few feet instead of so many yards, I wouldn't mind them so much."

"Well, now Mary, I'm real sorry," says Ma. "But not half so sorry as Madame Estelle will be if anything happens to Maude! I'm real fond of the little beauty myself, and if you had been with a circus all the years I was, you would understand her better!"

Well, believe you me, it wasn't a lack of understanding with me, it was a religious conviction, and why not, for hadn't them beasts made trouble beginning with the original eviction of undesirable tenants, and was I to think it likely that our own janitor would be any more lenient if Maude was to get, say, as far as the elevator? Keeping snakes never got a tenant in right yet and loose ones might set the first of May forward as many months as was necessary. Not to mention my own personal feelings in the matter, which it's a fact I once broke a contract on the Small-Time years ago because a snake-charmer come off just as I was going on and I used to meet her and them in the wings every time.

Well, anyways, I will say it for Ma, she certainly turned in and helped me make a thorough search for Maude, which was going some for a lady of her figure. Looking for a vanished snake in a apartment means considerable gymnastics, because nothing can be overlooked with safety, and I didn't want that parlor-eel slipping anything over on me--especially her cold stomach in the middle of the night across my face, for instance.

So I and Ma looked under all the furniture and in the pedalcase of the pianola and in the vases and behind the steam radiators, back of the big gold clock, inside the victrola, under the rugs, back of the pictures on the wall and every place:--but no Maude. Finally we even took a look out in the hall, although we knew n.o.body had opened the front door, and after that we opened the wall safe where we keep our diamonds in a stocking, this being a compromise between Ma's habits and my common-sense. And then we had a peep into the ice-box where Ma found a saucer of pudding which she had someways overlooked at supper but no snake.

And after we had felt under the bath-tub with my best lavender umbrella which what with the limousine it was the first use I ever had for it, and then taken a forlorn hope into the soiled-clothes hamper, we give it up, and sat down with ruined georgette blouses and perfectly wild looking hair and all heated up like a couple of wrestlers. Any one coming in then would of thought we had been indulging in a family discussion of some kind, and for a matter of that it's the truth. I said a few raw remarks about the kind of a home she run for me and I working as hard as cider to keep it and now she left snakes around, Gawd knows where, and how would a artist like myself get the rest to do justice to my work on the bomb-explosion scene in the last reel of "Bosh or Bolshevik?" which I was going to be shot in only the next day, and if she had to support me instead of I her, she would have a right to leave any animals or minerals around she chose, but this was my flat and although Gawd knew she was welcome, pretty soon we would have none if I was to be made a nervous wreck out of instead of the biggest nerve in pictures. Yes, I said that and a lot more pretty mean stuff as only a daughter can--for even with my refinement I am but a mere human after all, and under the glittering success of my career is several common human failings and at times I act no different from any less well-known female in the bosom of my family.

So I had the last word and Ma was in wrong and went to get lunch without a come-back out of her. Alas! Had I but canned that foolish chatter of mine! But how could I know she was going to act like she done later because of it? You can't remember forwards and if a person could, it's ten to one they'd quit before they was off the bottle and go back to Heaven whence they come, life being so full of mistakes you could of avoided if only you had done something different from what you did!

II

Well, anyways, Ma went back to the kitchen to fix up a little snack of waffles and honey and poached eggs on hash and cream-cake and strawberries with a cup of cocoa and whipped cream for a light lunch, her lunches being light about the way a "light" motor truck is, and I went back to my joint contract and was so mad I concluded to write into it not alone expenses and Ros...o...b..t a cottage or bungaloo, as it is called in Los Angeles, while out there. With which I wrote a refined but firm letter to Goldringer, saying this was my final word on the matter and spoke also for Jim. Then I enclosed the contract and Ma called out the cocoa was getting cold and so I stamped and put it in the hall-slot which I never have a feeling any letter going down it is headed for anybody except maybe the devil, and not even him unless it don't get stuck on the way. And then I ate, though not with much appet.i.te, what with expecting any moment to see Maude crawl out from some place, and Ma being quiet to a extent not to be fully accounted for by three plates of waffles. It wasn't natural in her, that quiet, but I remembered the doughnuts and laid it to the sequence. Still I tried to get her to talk, as talking, if about herself, generally cheers her quite a lot.

"Anything ail you, Ma?" I says.

"Nothing much," says Ma, lighting into the cream-cake. "Nothing to speak of."

"Tell me about it then!" I says. But Ma wouldn't. She heaved a big sigh and handed me a subst.i.tute for what was really on her mind. It was something just as good, I credit her for that.

"You know the stuff you ordered from Schultz?" she says.

"You mean the wet goods I ordered to keep Jim from parching to death this summer?" I says, because although Jim is far from a real drinking man, he having his profession of dancing always in mind even after eleven P. M. and Gawd knows never fails to realize that sound acrobatics is the basis of all good dancing which a drunkard never yet was, or at least not for over two seasons; still, in spite of all this, Jim is a mere male and a drink or two, especially if difficult to get, is not by any means objectionable to him. And beside he had been two years in France and I didn't want him to feel it had anything on America when he come home, even if I had to go so far as to myself personally replace what Congress had taken away. Do you get me? You do! And I had done it as far as my bank account, cellarette and the liquor-dealer permitted. Which looked like it was going to postpone the drought quite sometime for us. And while here and there stuff like champagne and brandy and vermouth had to be bought, like remnants on a bargain counter--just kind of odds and ends of each--I had one satisfaction out of the buy, and that was getting a case of Old Home Rye--absolutely the last case in the city--probably the last in the whole entire U. S. A., and it was Jim's one best bet. A high-ball of this--just one--with his dinner was about his exact idea of drinking, and I had calculated that the three gallons, taking it at his rate would last him pretty near a year, and by that time some new vice would surely of been invented to take its place.

Well, anyways, I had ordered it and paid for it, and there wasn't any more of it anywheres, and it and the contract with Goldringer was two of the best surprises I had for Jim.

"Well," says Ma. "I can't say I approve of the demon Rum coming into our--your house, but once money is paid out, I like to see the goods--_all_ the goods, delivered," she says.

"What's this leading up to?" I asked.

"To the way that man Schultz cheats you!" says Ma. "He didn't send the Old Home Rye!"

Believe you me, never have I been handed a meaner deal than that, no, not even the night Goldringer first heard of me and came to see my try-out for the big time and my pink tights didn't come.

"Ma!" says I. "Why don't you call him up and find out why didn't he?"

"I've done that!" she says. "And he claims on his oath it was sent with the rest. I spoke to the boy which brought it and then to Schultz himself. They both claim they give it to Rudie."

Rudie was the janitor but he had missed his profession. He had ought to of been a sleight-of-hand man, for he could make things disappear in a way which would of delighted a morning matinee audience, especially those under twelve years of age. Believe you me, though, he was never known to make anything grow where nothing had been before--not rabbits or even silk handkerchiefs, but it's the truth that he had onct or twice caused a vanished quart of cream to reappear if given a sufficiently hard call quick enough after it was missed. And the minute I heard he was cast for a part in my tragedy, I decided to hear him read his lines right off without no delay, because it was practically impossible that he could of got away with more than a quart yet and I was prepared to go through the business of believing him when he come to the description of how he had dropped it by accident and too bad but it broke.

Which was all right in theory, but Rudie did nothing of the kind.

Evidently so long as he was lying he had made up his mind it was as well to be killed for a case as a quart, as the poet says, and when I sent for him and he had kept me waiting while he sifted the ashes and pounded on the steam pipes and talked to the garbage man and got a light from the cop and chatted with the elevator-girl and a few little odds and ends like that just to show me where I got off, he finally decided to come up. Well, it was seven months to Xmas, so what could I expect?

Anyways, he finally made his entrance, down R. C. to footlights, in my Louis-size drawing-room, leaving tracks behind him which Ma spotted with a angry eye as fast as he laid them, and with all the well-known courtesy of the proletariat he looked me in the eye.

"Well?" he says.

"Say, Trotsky!" I says, for I had never liked this bird, as he was on one continued drunk. "Look here, Lenine," I says, glad of the chance to insult him. "A case of fine whisky at sixty dollars net seems to of been avoidably detained in your dug-out. I expect that with a little searching you can stumble on it. And as for that bottle you broke by accident, don't bother to mention it," I says, "because I am gladly doing so for you," I says. "Only kindly find the rest and we will also forget about this morning's cream."

Probably I hadn't ought to of been so generous, for Rudie sort of swayed a little and give me a pleasant childlike smile out of his unshaved doormat of a face.

"Dunno wash you mean!" he says, real pleasant.

"Jim is right about the kick in that stuff," I says, eyeing him critically. "You certainly have a swell bun!"

"Why, Mish La Tour!" says Rudie. "Don't drink a dropsh! Never toush it."

And with that he give a sigh of disappointment in me which made the place smell like a bar-room!

"But of coush I'll shee if itsh down stairsh!" he says.

Well, there was no use in arguing with him, I could see that all right, all right, but I left him know I wasn't swallowing any such a poor alibi as his own word.

"All right, you second-hand shock absorber!" I says. "Maybe I can't jolt the truth out of you, but I will hand you one small piece of information before you take your reluctant departure. You'll find that whiskey or the cops will. And if they don't get me a judgment against you, one will come from heaven, that's a cinch, for you not only got the stuff, but you took it off a returning soldier which is a bigger crime than mere patriotic stealing would be," I says. "You wait and see what'll happen to you if you don't come across! We got a long score to settle, we have, and right always wins out in the end, and that's my middle name!"

Well, he went away very proud and hurt to think I would suspect him of such a crime, he being that kind of a drunk. Do you get me? Of course!

Gosh! How I do hate to see a person in liquor; really, I think prohibition will be a good thing for all of us, and was myself only storing up a little, for exceptional reasons. And when a person begins talking about federal prohibition and their const.i.tutional rights I can't help but wonder why they don't consider it in the physical as well as the political sense.

Well, anyways, it was a blow to lose that Old Home, and awful irritating on top of Maude. And then, while pulling myself into one of these new accident-policy-destroying narrow skirts which belongs with what is through courtesy called my new walking suit, the hall-girl brought the mail and Musette give it to me in the midst of my negligee and struggles and I stopped dead when I seen the first letter, for it was marked "Soldier's Mail" and only one which has some one expected home and at the same time welcome, can know how that particular mark thrills.

Musette observed me register joy so she registers it too, and I tore open the envelope forgetting the skirt which had a death-grip on my knees, and opened up the page in Jim's dear handwriting.

Did you ever come to a time in your life where you had one trouble on top of another until it seemed like nothing more could possibly happen except maybe the end of the world, and then something still worse was pulled on you? You have! Well, this letter was pretty near the end of the world to me--at least a distinct postponement of anything which could with any truth be called living. For Jim wasn't coming back with the 70th after all! As I read his words in that dear boyish handwriting of his which he never had time to learn to write better, being like myself quicker with his feet than hands, my eyes filled with tears and I stumbled to the day-bed as good as I could with the skirt, and sat down. It seemed he had been put in charge of some special work in Paris and it might be six months before he'd get sent home! Six months! And me getting all ready for a second honeymoon inside of six weeks! And instead of being out in the wholesome country with me at Saratoga or Long Beach or Niagara Falls or some place, he would be in Paris! That was what I had to face and any woman will readily understand my feelings.

Believe you me, I didn't care for Maude or the Old Home or the contract or anything for over three-quarters of a hour. And I had to wash my face and powder my nose three times after I was finally dressed on account of breaking down again when just completed.

Whenever a person has a real sorrow come to them the best way to do is control it quick before it controls you. So after I had indulged in the womanly weep which certainly was coming to me, I braced up and got into the new suit with the idea of taking as brisk a walk as it would allow of. Then I put on a new hat which I had intended for my second honeymoon but which would never see it or him, as it would undoubtedly be out of style by the time Europe had made up its mind one way or another, and I was just going to leave when the bell rung and Ma come in to say it was a caller.

"It's that Mr. Mulvaney from the Welcome Home Committee, the one that had you on the 'phone yesterday," says Ma. And after a minute I kind of caught control of myself and says well, all right, I would see him and went in.

Well, it sure is strange the birds they pick out for these deeds of synthetic patriotism. This one come from the neighborhood of Fourteenth Street and must of got his appointment of chief welcomer from the way he give the glad hand. You would of thought he was cranking a flivver that wouldn't crank the way he kept on shaking after any real need was past.

And if he was to of greeted each of the boys the way he done me, the army wouldn't be demobilized in our generation! Also he had a suit on him which spoke for itself and a watch-chain which must of posed for them in the cartoons of Capital--do you get me? Sure! I and he had had a long talk on the telephone as per above, and so as soon as he left go his cinch on my hand, he got right down to business.

"Now, Miss La Tour--er--it--er--gives me great pleasure to think you will take charge of the Theatrical Women's Division," he says. "Er--I am a great admirer of yours--that picture you done, 'Cleopatria,'

now--great stuff!"

Well, I let that pa.s.s, because how would such a self important bird as this know my art when he sees it, and if he enjoyed Theda, why not leave him be? I changed the subject at once for fear he would be confusing me with Caruso next.