Those things go big nowadays.

I could get the music publishers to slip me a little on the side for using their songs, too. Of course I don't need the money, for I've got the biggest part of that ten thou. inheritance left yet; but still it would keep me busy and away from the cafes, for now all I do all day long is to roam around from one place to another imbibing booze and balloon juice.

It's beautiful billiards all right for the time being, but I always feel so on the blink the next morning.

Wilbur doesn't care; that is, he said he knew I had artistic temperament, and if I wanted to get it out of my system, vaudeville was as good as anything.

I was talking to a guy the other day that is in vaudeville, and he said that down around the St. James Building you could buy acts by the pound.

Another guy wanted to take my money and star me in a musical comedy.

Wasn't he the kind gent?

Gee, I didn't tell you how Wilbur come to get pinched, did I? Well, it was this way:

You know Wilbur is of Spanish descent even though he was born in Canarsie, and he has a very jealous disposition; so the night after I had promised to be his own little star of hope he discovered me in a certain cafe with another party. This other party was a dramatic critic and I was touting Wilbur's show, but Wilbur didn't know that, so when he saw me sitting there having the time of my young life he lost his nanny and caused a scene, forgetting this other party was a critic in his pa.s.sion.

The head waiter threw them both out, and the critic, seeing the police coming, said: "This is an actor trying to lick me," and naturally the cops nearly beat poor Wilbur to a pulp.

I went down to the station house and tried to get Wilbur out, but the police were so rude that I had to tell them where to get off, and they threatened to jug me, so I slid.

Wilbur got out the next day, though, and told me over the 'phone that he loved me all the more for trying to come to his rescue. I wish they would import the Emporia police force here. I can lick him myself.

My! is it that late? Wilbur will be waiting to take me over to Childs'.

So long!

Sabrina returns to the chorus so that she can keep an apartment, a maid and an automobile without causing comment. She also talks of getting a house-boat for the summer with some girl friends and discourses on the advisability of having the wardrobe mistress for a chaperone.

CHAPTER NINE

"Virtue has its own reward and that's all it ever gets," remarked Sabrina, the Show Girl, as we met her on the street. "I am once again a wage-earner. This floating around town as one of the idle rich is all to the peaches for a while, but as a continuous performance it makes a poor showing. You know when I first became an heiress I had a call-board put up in my boudoir and a little notice pinned on it that read, 'Rehearsal, 10 o'clock to-morrow, everybody,' and then I would lay in bed all morning and make faces at it.

"Everybody had a large bunch of fun kidding me about my inheritance till I was nearly bug. Why, would you believe it? I couldn't go to dinner or riding with a gentleman friend, but some humorous dame sitting at another table would arch her eyebrows and then, if I introduced them to the gent, they would say, 'I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Suchandsuch; how are things in Pittsburg?'

"At last it got so bad that I decided to go back to work and earn my little twenty per, so that I could keep my automobile and wear good clothes without the slightest taint of suspicion on my character. With that n.o.ble end in view I started on the still hunt. Nothing doing with that traveling thing.

"I tucked my little sc.r.a.pbook 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 cla.s.sical 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, coa.r.s.e 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 gla.s.s 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 c.o.c.ktails 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 a.s.sistants 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 b.u.t.ton and the steward was right on the job to take your order.

"Anything from a gla.s.s of hops to a Merry Widow c.o.c.ktail, 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.