"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, n.o.ble 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 b.u.t.ter 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 skysc.r.a.per.

"The town council has already pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 s.e.x. But, understand, I am not by any means d.a.m.ning the whole male s.e.x, 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 n.o.b 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 Sat.u.r.day night? My, I would hate to cast any reflections on the judges, but their choice certainly was b.u.m. 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.