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Believe You Me!

by Nina Wilcox Putnam · English · Gutenberg #33728 · 338,585 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Believe You Me!

Author: Nina Wilcox Putnam


        
Release date: September 14, 2010 [eBook #33728]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33728

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BELIEVE YOU ME! ***




Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.fadedpage.net







BELIEVE YOU ME!

NINA WILCOX PUTNAM

AUTHOR OF "ADAM'S GARDEN," "THE IMPOSSIBLE BOY," ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1919,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




TO R. J. S.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Ladies Enlist              11

II Pro Bonehead Publico      66

III Holy Smokes!            125

IV Anything Once            156

V Now is the Time           202

VI The Glad Hand            244




BELIEVE YOU ME!

I




LADIES ENLIST

I


I WASN'T going to make no statement about this here affair; and I
wouldn't even yet, only for our publicity man. The day the story leaked
he called me up in the A. M., which is the B. C. of the daytime, and
woke me out of the first perfectly good sleep I'd had since Jim pulled
that stunt and floored me so.

First off, I wouldn't answer the phone; but Musette stood by me with it
in her hand and just made me.

"For my sake, mademoiselle!" says she, just like she used to in our act
on the big time, which we played before I got into the dancing game.
"For my sake, mademoiselle," she says, "do not refuse to talk with the
publicity man!"

Well, when I heard who it was I seen some sense in what she says; so I
set up amid my black-and-white-check bed, which--believe you me--is as
up to date as my latest drawing-room dance. And I grabbed off the phone.

"Yes," says I in a fainting voice; "this is Miss La Tour. What is it,
please? I'm far from well."

"Cut out that stuff, Mary!" says a male voice. "This is Roscoe. I want
you to give out a statement about you and Jim splitting up."

"I _won't!"_ says I, very sharp. "Whatter yer think I am?" I says.
"That's nobody's business but our own!"

"Oh, ain't it, though?" says Roscoe, very sarcastic. "The biggest
parlor-dancing outfit in America busts up and you can't be seen, even,
for two whole days! The stage at the Royal ain't notified that your
piece is called off; the De-Luxe Hotel don't get no notice that you
ain't going to appear; and all the info' I could get when I called up
your flat is that you was gone out!"

"And so I was!" says I, indignant.

"Then I call up Jim's hotel and they say he's gone!" shouted Roscoe.
"Hell!" says he, forgetting that me and the telephone operator both was
ladies. "Hell! What kind of way is that to treat a guy you're paying
three thou. a year to for getting your picture in the paper every time
you sneeze?"

I didn't have any comeback about that, for there was certainly some
truth in what he says. But I wasn't to be put down so easy.

"I guess I know my business, Ros," I says, sharp, "or I wouldn't be
living in a swell flat on the Drive, all fixed up like a furniture shop,
with a limousine and two fool dogs, and earned every cent of it myself,
and no one can say a word against me, if I didn't know my own business.
So there!"

"Looka here, Mary," says Roscoe. "There's going to be a lot of talk up
and down the Rialto if you don't come across with some explanation. I'm
comin' right up to get it."

"No, you don't," I says, for I hadn't had my facial massage in three
days, and, after all, Roscoe is a man, even if press agents ain't
exactly human. "No, you don't, Ros!" I says. "If I gotter make some
statement, I'll write the dope myself and you can fix it up after--see?
It's a big story, but delicate, and I'm going to have no
misunderstanding over it."

"All right, Mary," says Ros. "But you get the stuff ready for the
morning papers. I'll be up for it."

Then he hung up and I knew I had to come across. Besides, Ma come in
just then; and while I may boss my press agent, and even sometimes my
partner and Musette and the two dogs, Ma sorter gets my goat. Ma had on
a elegant rose-silk negligee I give her; and as usual, she had it ruined
by tying a big gingham apron over it, which made her look the size of a
house, but sort of comforting. She stopped by the bed and set both her
hands on her lips--the way she does when she don't mean to be answered
back.

"Now, Mary Gilligan, you get right up and wash your teeth!" says Ma,
"and do your three handsprings and other exercises, decent and proper;
and then eat the breakfast I got cooked for you."

Funny thing, but Ma ain't got a mite of dramatic sense. I just can't
understand it, after her having been with the circus so long on the
trapeze, until she got too heavy after I come; and since then in the
wardrobe-end of the theater, and all. I ain't never been able to break
her in to none of the refinements of life, either, and she will go into
the kitchen for all I say; and some day I just know she'll call me
Gilligan in public. And a nice laugh that'll get!

But, anyhow, I usually do what she says, because Ma is a fine trainer;
and--believe you me--I wouldn't be able to hold on to Jim's neck and
swing out straight twenty times round, like I do--or did--only for her
and her keeping me on the job like she's done. The only other trouble
with Ma is, she can't seem to properly understand that it's my artistic
temperament which has brought in the cash--that and some good looks, and
me realizing that this refined parlor-dancing stuff would go over big.
Of course Jim's being able to wear a dress suit like he'd been born in
it has helped some, even aside from being such a fine partner; which
brings me back, as they say, to the tale.

Well, I done my exercise, and so forth, and then I had Musette bring up
the sofa, a elegant gilt one--for we got what Ma calls Looie-the-Head-Waiter
stuff in our parlor--to the window, so's I could lay and look dreamily
out over the autos on the Drive to the ships in the river; you know--the
German ships which have been taking out their naturalization papers, or
something. And, as I lay there thinking, I come to the conclusion that
if I told about the split I better tell all, including my own
enlistment.

Oh, how well I can now understand why many men enlist, having been
through it all myself! And how then they long to get out, and can't, and
realize that they was boobs! And how they learn that they weren't boobs
after all, once they got used to it! Do you get me?

Well, anyways, I decided to tell the whole story, which, of course,
begun at Ruby Roselle's party.

I think I don't hardly need to state that I don't generally go with that
Roselle crowd. No acrobatic dancer could and keep her health.
And--believe you me--every drawing-room dance act that is worth a
thousand dollars a week has acrobatics, and good sound acrobatics, as
its base. Well! As far as Ruby Roselle and her crowd is concerned, far
be it from me to pass any remarks. But any one in the theatrical line
will tell you that a girl which has made a reputation only on the color
of her hair and is not averse to tights don't have to lead the rigid
life of a first-class A-1 dancer, leaving out all judgments as to
character, which are usually wrong anyways.

But, having said that much, I will only add that I have never gone out a
lot, and seldom without Ma. And while champagne is not exactly a
stranger to me, owing to Jim and me always having to have it served with
our dinner at the Ritz each night--which any one with sense knows is all
publicity stuff and we never drink it--still, I'm not in favor of
champagne parties, which they generally end in trouble; and this one of
Ruby's was no exception.

Indeed, I wouldn't of gone in the first place only for us unfortunately
being on the same bill at the opening of the Superba Roof, which, of
course, being the big midnight show of the year, and the rest of the
leads all having accepted, and Ruby being in so strong with the
management, it would of been bad business policy to refuse.

When I pointed this out to Jim he couldn't see it at first, owing to me
never having gone on such parties; and nobody can say any different,
with truth. But the Superba contract was the biggest thing we had got
yet. And, coming on top of the twenty minutes in Give Us a Kiss, the
twenty minutes at the De-Luxe Hotel, the net profs. was pretty fair.
So, for once, we accepted an invite to one of Ruby's famous blow-outs.

Ruby Roselle's house was something wonderful, but not to my taste, there
being too much in it, besides smelling of cologne and incense, which,
from her singing Overseas in red-white-and-blue tights, was more or less
to be expected. Also, the clothes on her and the other girls was too
elaborate. My simple little real lace, and my hair, which Musette always
does so it looks like I done it myself, made them seem like a Hippodrome
production alongside of a play by this foreigner, Ib-sen--do you get me?
I was proud of this; for--believe you me--getting refinement means work,
just like any other achievement, and I had modeled myself on Mrs. Pieter
van Norden for years, than whom there is surely no one more refined by
reputation, though I had never seen her. I could see Jim felt the same
about all this, and we exchanged a look on it; for, besides being
engaged to be married we was the best of friends when we come in--when
we come in! Remember that!

After we said "How do ye do?" to Ruby, I whispered to Jim not to
celebrate too much. He ain't a drinking man if for no other reasons but
those of my own; but just oncet in a while he'd get a little more than
he should, and this opening night the show had gone awful big. Had he
but heeded me better! Alas! Nothing doing; it was all in vain!

For description of party see any motion-picture film on Vice. Why waste
words on what is so well known? And--believe you me--this was just like
a fillum; and, as I have said, nothing like that for mine, usually. But,
even so, we might of got off safe and home without no trouble--only for
Von Hoffman and the baby alligator.

It seems like this here Von Hoffman was stuck on Ruby; in fact, it was
him that suggested her singing Overseas in that fierce costume. Also, he
gave her the alligator, she having tried to pick on a present he
couldn't possibly get when he wanted to buy her something. But, being
German by descent, he had the efficiency to get it, anyways; and there
was the alligator at the party, about fifteen inches long, with a gold
collar and diamonds in the collar--and we at war!

Well, it seems this alligator hadn't eat since it come; and after Ruby
had a double Bronx and two glasses of champagne the memory of his
hunger began to worry her--do you get me? So she had him brought in and
set in the middle of the supper table on the orchids at two dollars per
each, which he sat on without moving while the crowd tried everything on
him, from olives to wine, with no success. The alligator seemed a awful
boob, for he just lay there like a stuffed one, which we knew he wasn't
on account of his not having eaten.

Well, Jim hadn't heeded me. I guess the truth must be told, though,
honest, he had took but very little; still, being unused to it, the
effect was greater--do you get me? And pretty soon he and this Von
Hoffman was kidding each other and that alligator something fierce.

Now Jim took a hate on this Von Hoffman bird the minute he laid eyes on
him, partly on account of the costume of Ruby, and also on general
principles, because of the bird's accent. But, the alligator not moving
or nothing, Jim asks if the alligator understands only German.

"In all probability," says Von Hoffman; "he is a high-class alligator."

"Then he ought to understand American," says Jim. "He'll have to
eventually; why not now?

"There's nothing to prove that," says the German bird with a sneer. "He
will probably get along very well as he is, with German only."

Jim looked mad as a hatter; but instead of taking it out on this Von
Hoffman, as he had ought to have, he turned on that poor dumb beast.

"Well," says Jim to the alligator, "here's where you learn some
patriotism."

And he leaned 'way across the table until his face was only an inch or
two away from the alligator's. Jim looked that animal straight in the
eye and spoke very severe.

"To hell with Germany!" says Jim.

And with that the alligator snapped--snapped right onto the end of Jim's
nose! Oh, my Gawd, but I yelled! So did Jim--believe you me! And then we
all tried to get that fiend of a pro-German alligator off Jim's face.
When they succeeded in making him let go you had ought to of seen Jim's
nose! It had four holes in it and was bleeding something fierce.

Oh, may I never live to see such a sight again, let alone having to go
through what followed! For once I forgot my refinement completely, and I
remember yelling at Jim to kill that German. For if he didn't sick his
alligator onto Jim, who did? And there he stood laughing at Jim for all
he was worth; and Jim never offered to fight him!

Believe you me, all my sympathy for Jim melted right away when I seen he
wasn't doing nothing but stand there holding on to his nose and moaning.

"I know alligator bites is deadly poison!" He kept saying it over and
over again, while Von Hoffman was laughing himself sick.

"I hope it is poison!" he says. "I hope it is, you jackanapes of an
American dancer!"

At this I walked right up to that Von Hoffman bird.

"I'll get you for this!" I says. "Somehow I know you're a wrong one, and
_I'll_ get you, even if Jim don't want to! I'd enlist to-morrow if I was
a man and get your old Kaiser as well!"

Then, the next thing I knew, me and Jim was in the limousine, on the way
to the hospital; and Jim was still moaning over being poisoned by the
alligator and getting blood all over the place, and the car just
relined and everything! I didn't say a word just then, because, of
course, you must stick to a pal in time of immediate trouble--do you get
me? But I was boiling mad inside, though worried a little about the
poison. Still, Jim's not hitting that bird, Von Hoffman, was worse to me
than death itself.

At the hospital the chauffeur and me got Jim inside somehow and to a
desk in the hall. There was a snappy-looking nurse sitting there with a
book, and our coming in at that hour no more worried her than a fly in
cold weather. She just looked up quiet and spoke--sort of unhospitable.

"Name of ailment?" she inquired.

"Alligator bite!" I told her, brief; and I will say this got her goat a
little, because she made me say it twice more before she would believe
me.

Then she directed us down a long hall, and a young guy in a summer suit
of white duck stopped reading the newspaper long enough to give Jim's
nose the once over.

"No cause for alarm," says this bird. "The nose will be about twice its
normal size for a day, that's all!" All! And, as if that wasn't enough,
he painted the nose and all round it with some brown stuff, which
stopped the bleeding but made Jim look like he was made up for some sort
of comedy act. Jim was perfectly sober by then and quit talking about
poison, and etc., and when he was back in the limousine I just let
myself go and bawled him out good and plenty.

"Now see here, Jim," I says, "I've stuck by you to-night long enough to
make sure you ain't goin' to die or nothin'; and now I'm through!"

"You been just fine, Mary," says Jim, trying to take my hand. I took it
away quick.

"You don't get me!" I says. "I mean I'm through for keeps. The
engagement is broken, and everything!"

"Whatter yer mean--broken?" says Jim, sort of dazed.

"Just that!" I snapped. "Here you get tight and take a insult from a
German; and, as if that wasn't enough, you go farther and get bit by a
pro-German alligator! And you don't even offer to fight the German who
owns the alligator, either! And, what's furthermore, you've got your
face swoll up so's you won't be able to dance to-morrow night; and that
iodine won't wash off; and the act is crabbed in the bud--do you get me?
Crabbed! And I'm through--that's all! So don't never come near me
again!"

Believe you me, Jim tried to make me listen to reason; but I couldn't
hear no reason to listen to, and so wouldn't let him say much. Then Jim
got mad and bawled me out for breaking my rule and going on the party,
and by the time we got to my place we wasn't speaking at all--not even
good night or good-by forever!


II

FOR hours and hours after Ma got me to bed I just lay there thinking and
aching and feeling all hot and ashamed and terribly lonesome, and with
my career all ruined because of the Germans--to say nothing of having
been obliged to become disengaged to Jim.

And then, just as I was nearly crazy wondering how I was to get my
self-respect back, I got a swell idea. I would enlist! Ladies could. I
remembered reading a piece in a newspaper some place about yeowomen or
something. And as soon as I realized that I could serve Uncle Sam and
help get even with that bird, Von Hoffman, and the Kaiser and the
alligator, and lose my personal feelings in public service, I got the
most wonderfully easy feeling round my heart and dropped right off to
sleep. But when I woke up in the morning it was something fierce, the
way I felt. Believe you me, it was just like I had ate Welsh rabbit the
night before, or something--the weight that was on my chest. At first I
couldn't make out just what it was. Then I remembered. I had lost Jim!
Of course I hadn't lost him so much as shook him; but it was all the
same, or looked that way in the cold gray dawn of ten A. M.

Honest to Gawd, I never knew how fond I was of Jim until I woke up that
day and realized he was gone forever! But I wouldn't of phoned him and
say I'd changed my mind--not on a bet I wouldn't. And, anyways, I hadn't
changed my mind. The evidences begun to pile up against him. I commenced
to remember how he had been away on some mysterious trips so many
afternoons for the last four or five months; and maybe with some blonde,
for all I knew. And then his going to pieces like that over a mere
alligator bite, the way he done; and, worst of all, not hitting that
German, even though in pain, and crabbing our act by getting bit on the
nose.

The more I thought about it, the worser I felt, laying there in
retrospect and negligee. And I couldn't see no way of us ever getting
together again--even when he called up and apologized; which, of course,
I expected he would do any minute. But he didn't; and by the time Ma
came in and routed me out of bed I had myself worked up so's I was
crying something terrible, and hating Jim as hard as I could, which
would of been enough to kill him--only for the pain in my heart for
loving him.

While I ate only a light repast of ham and eggs, and a little marmalade,
and etc., Ma made me tell her all; which I done the best way I could
with crying in between. And then I told her about me having made up my
mind to enlist. She was some surprised at that, though not much. Ma,
having lived through two circuses and a trapeze act, it is sort of hard
to surprise her very much--do you get me? So all Ma says was:

"Well, Mary Gilligan!" says she. "Can ladies enlist? I had a idea," she
says, "only gentlemen was permitted."

"No," says I. "I see a piece in the paper where ladies can go in the
navy--yeowomen they call them; a fancy name for a stenographer!"

"A whole lot too fancy!" says Ma, very prompt. "And no daughter of mine,
a decent, respectable girl, is going sailing off on no battleship with a
lot of sailors--not to mention submarines; not if I know it!" says Ma.
"So, Mary Gilligan, you may as well put that idea out of your head, let
alone you ain't a stenographer and couldn't learn it in a month."

"Well, Ma," I says, "maybe you're right; and I do get seasick awful
quick. But--oh, Ma! I got to enlist some place. Can't you see the way I
feel?"

Ma could.

"I know!" she says, very sympathetic. "I was the same when your pa
missed both the third trapeze and the life net. I would of enlisted when
he died if there had been a war. And, of course, you feel like Jim was
dead. How about the Red Cross?"

"Won't do for me," I says, prompt. "I don't see myself sitting around in
no shop, with a dust cloth tied over my head, selling tickets. I got to
do something active or I'll go bugs!"

Then Ma had a real idea.

"How about this here Woman's Automobile Service?" says she. "The one I
read you the piece about? You're a woman and you got a auto."

"Ma, you're a wonder!" I says. "Look up the address while I get my hat
on! Tell Musette to call for the limousine; and watch me make a trial
for my new job!"

So they done like I asked, and I kissed Ma and Musette good-by; also the
two fool dogs, for I had a sort of feeling like I was going into battle
already.

"When Jim calls up tell him it's no good--he can't see me," says I, the
last thing. And then I set off in the limousine.

Well, I'd put on a very simple imported model and a small hat, and only
my diamond earrings, and a brooch Jim had give me, when we was first
engaged, over my aching heart. I wanted, above all things, to look
refined; for, even if the U. S. Army isn't always quite that, still,
this was a ladies' branch of it. And you know what women can
be--especially in organizations; though I admit I hadn't had much
previous experience with them, except the White Kittens, which Ma
insisted on me keeping up with and contributing to their annual ball,
because of she having always belonged. And--believe you me--the scraps I
seen at some of their Execution Committee meetings would make the Battle
of the Marne look like a pinochle post-mortem!

Well, as I was saying, I took no chances on appearances of refinement in
this case, not knowing exactly what class of ladies would be running the
Woman's Automobile Service. And, even when I got to their office, it
took me several minutes before I got the right dope on them and their
line--do you get me?

In the first place, it wasn't at all like the White Kittens'
Headquarters, in the Palatial Hotel ball-room. Instead, it was a shop on
a swell side street, with two very plain capable-looking dark-green
ambulances standing outside. My limousine had to stop next door on
account of them.

Well, I got out and walked across and into that shop. And--believe you
me--it was the plainest place you ever saw; not even so much as a flower
or a rug to give it a womanly touch. But neat! My Gawd! And there was
three young ladies there, all in the snappiest-looking uniforms you ever
want to see--dark green, like the ambulances, with gold on the collar,
and caps like the Oversea's Army, and the cutest leggings! My!

Maybe you think they looked like a chorus? They did not! They was as
business-like as English officers. Over in one corner a frowzy-looking
little dame was sitting, reading a book. There wasn't no unnecessary
furniture in the place, and 'way at the back was a door marked Captain
Worth--Private, which seemed funny.

The minute I come in one of the girls jumped up and says what could she
do for me?

I seen at once she was a perfect lady.

"I am Marie La Tour," I says in a very quiet, low-pitched voice, like a
drawing-room act.

"Yes?" says she. "And what can I do for you, Miss--er----"

"La Tour!" I says again, as patient as possible.

But it was plain she didn't get me, even the second time, though it's a
cinch she heard me all right, all right. But the name simply didn't mean
nothing in her young life. Was I surprised? I was! Of course if I had
said "I am Mrs. Vernon Castle," and she didn't know who it was, I
wouldn't of got such a jolt. But Marie La Tour! Well, there's ignorance
even among the educated, and I realized this and didn't try to wise her
up any. After all, I was not out for publicity, but for serving my
country. Besides, I had heard right along that the army was full of
democracy; and, of course, this was some of it.

"Well," I says, "I would like to enlist. My heart is broken, but full of
patriotism, and this seemed a good place to come."

"Good!" says this young lady, which I had noticed by this time she had a
lieutenant's uniform on her, but not by any means intending she was glad
my heart was broken. "Good!" she says. "Sit down and let me tell you
about our organization."

"Is it the regular army?" I asked.

"Not yet," says she; "but we hope we will eventually get official
recognition. We are already used by the Government for dispatch and
ambulance service and as escorts and drivers for officers and members of
the various departments; also, as government inspectors. So you see it
is a very live work."

"And it's a awfully pretty costume," I says; "so snappy."

"The uniform is only the outward sign of what we are doing," says Miss
Lieutenant. "You have a car?"

"Outside," I says; "eight-thousand dollars, and all paid for. You can
have it if it's any good to you. Ma always prefers the street car
anyways."

"Thank you; that is splendid!" says the lady officer, very pleasant, but
not exactly excited over my offer--which was some offer at that.

She took out a slip of paper and begun filling in some blanks on it.

First, the make of the car, and then the answers to the questions she
shot at me.

"Can we have it at a moment's notice?" she said. "Yes? Good! Is it new?
In good condition? Do you loan or give it?"

"Give!" I says, brief. "I am not going to be a piker to Uncle Sam."

At this the lady lieutenant actually came out of her shell enough to
give me a smile.

"That's the spirit!" she says. "We sometimes have as many as twenty
offers of cars a day. But, as a rule, they are half-time loans. Can you
drive?"

"Drive a horse?" says I.

"No, no," says the kid, serious again, "a car, of course!"

"Why, no," says I, feeling sort of cheap. "Isn't there anything else I
can do?"

"Plenty," she says, cheerfully; "but you will have to learn to drive,
first of all. You must have a chauffeur's license, a doctor's
certificate of health, two letters of recommendation from prominent
citizens as to your loyalty and general character, and a graduate's
certificate from a technical automobile school."

"Anything else?" I says, sort of faint.

"Well, of course, you will have to take the nursing and first-aid course
at St. Timothy's Hospital," she says, "and the regular U. S. Infantry
drill. But that's about all."

"Do I have to learn all that stuff before I can come in?" I asked,
feeling about as small as when I had my first try-out on the big time
circuit.

"Oh, no," says Miss Lieutenant; "you can sign your application right
away if you like. Then you can come in immediately and start rookie
drill and the first-aid work with the service while you are getting your
technical training."

Believe you me, my breath was about taken away by all this stuff. I
don't really know now just what I did expect when I first come into
that shop, but I guess I had a sort of idea they'd give me a big welcome
and I'd get a costume of some sort; and, after that--well, I don't
really know. I certainly never expected what they handed me. But I was
game.

"When can I commence all this?" I says.

"When do you want to?" says Miss Lieutenant.

"To-day," I says firmly. At this Miss Lieutenant actually smiled again.

"Good!" says she. "The minute you bring me that health certificate and
those letters of recommendation I'll sign you up and you can start in at
the Automobile Training School. To-morrow morning is the time at St.
Timothy's Hospital and to-morrow afternoon is rookie drill."

"And when is the auto school?" I says.

"Every afternoon," she says.

"Then," says I, "I'll get them letters and the certificate here by noon.
And if you O. K. them I'll just start in this P. M.--if it's all the
same to you."

"Good!" says Miss Lieutenant, evidently not displeased, yet determined
to show no emotion.

Then she got up, indicating that our business was over, clicked her
heels together like a regular officer, and made a stiff little bow. Oh,
wasn't she professional, just!

"Well, I'll be back," I says, and started to go. "I'm sure I can get
everything but the technical stuff; and I'll get that if I die of it!"


III

AND--believe you me--I had no idea how near true them words was when I
uttered them. I was almost at the door when the frowzy little dame in
the corner, which I had forgotten she was there, come over and touched
me on the arm.

"I beg your pardon, my dear," she says; "but I want to tell you I think
your spirit is fine. And don't let any fear of the technical course
deter you. Even I was able to do it."

Was I surprised? I was! But she seemed very sweet and kind, though so
unnoticeable; so I just says thanks, and then--believe you me--started
out on some rush!

First of all, I hustled up to old Doc Al's place, which Ma and me has
him for a doctor; though Gawd knows there ain't never a blessed thing
the matter with our healths. Still, since her trapeze days Ma has
always felt that emergencies do happen. Well, of course, he give me a
perfect certificate in less than ten minutes' time, and I was off to see
Goldringer, head of the dancing trust; and him and his partner,
Kingston, each give me a elegant letter of recommendation, than which I
could scarcely of got letters from any more prominent citizens--unless,
maybe, Pres. Wilson.

Well, anyways, I took all three recommends down to the young lady
lieutenant, and there all was the same. Well, it was still lacking five
to twelve when I come in, and Miss Lieutenant looked quite some
surprised, though she tried not to. The letters and the doc's
certificate was O. K.; and the first thing you know, I was signed up and
given three passes. One for the auto school for two o'clock that same P.
M.; one for the hospital, calling for me to be on hand for rehearsal of
the nursing act at nine o'clock next morning. The third was also a call
for rehearsal--a outdoor drill in the park at three P. M. next day. It
looked like I was going to have a busy life.

"Well," I says, "would you like the car now?" I says. "I can walk home
just as good as not."

"No, thanks," says Miss Lieutenant. "We will call upon you for it when
it is needed."

Believe you me, I was grateful for that, because I ain't used to
hustling round in the early morning, and I had hustled some this time.
So I climbed in and says "Home, James!" and dropped in on the seat and
was carried uptown for lunch.

While on the way I got the first chance I'd had all morning to think
about Jim, and to wonder what he had said when he phoned to apologize.
And did the ache come back in my heart when I got thinking of him? It
did! I felt almost sick with lonesomeness by the time I got to the flat.
And whatter you think? Jim hadn't phoned at all! Not a peep out of him!

At first I thought there must be some mistake; but after I'd rowed with
the operator in the hall, and with Ma and Musette both, I come to
realize that the split between me and Jim was real--that we was off each
other sure enough. And it was not so surprising that a man which didn't
hit a German whose alligator had bit him wouldn't know how to treat a
lady!

But somehow Jim's being so mean about not phoning perked me up a lot and
give me courage to think of going into that auto school. I had
commenced to be awful doubtful about it; but Jim's neglect, together
with the lunch Ma had fixed, set me up a lot. And by one-thirty by my
wrist watch, and a quarter to two by the mantel-piece clock, I had the
strength to struggle into a _demitallieur,_ which is French for any
lady's suit costing over sixty dollars, and get to the auto school by
the time the lady lieutenant had told them to expect me.

Oh, that auto school! The torture chambers of this here Castle of
Chillon has nothing on it and--believe you me--the first set of tools a
person going into it needs is a manicure set. The next thing they need
is a good memory, the kind which can get a twelve-hundred-line part
overnight; which no dancer can nor is ever supposed to!

One thing I will say for that school, though--they was not such a
ill-informed lot as the Automobile Service. From the very minute I set
foot inside the place they knew who I was, and the manager give me the
pick of half a dozen young fellows who was just filled with patriotic
longing to help me qualify for the service.

After giving them the once over I finally decided on one lean-looking
bird, who seemed married, and quiet, and likely to teach me something
about the insides of an auto, instead of asking me questions about the
steps of the Teatime Tango Trot, and did I feel the same in my make-up?

Well, the first thing this bird asks me is do I know anything about a
car? And I says, know what? And he says, well, can I name the parts of a
car? And I says, yes; and he says for me to name them. So I says color,
lining, flower holder, clock, speaking tube and chauffeur.

Well, the bird says so far correct; but that wasn't enough, and he
guessed we better begin at the more fundamental parts and would I just
step inside?

Well, it seems this auto school undertakes to teach you everything about
a car from the paint on the body to the appendix, or magneto, as it is
called, in twenty lessons; which is like trying to teach the Teatime
Tango Trot, with three hand-springs and twenty whirls round your
partner's neck, by mail for five dollars. Which is to say it can't be
done.

First off, the instructor hands you a bunch of yellow papers with a lot
of typewriting on them--twenty sheets in all, or one per lesson, and
all you got to do is learn them good and then put into practice what you
learn; and after that what you can't do to a car would fill a book!

Well, after you grab this sheaf of stage bank notes you look at number
one and follow the bird that's teaching you round the room while he
reels it off. I guess the idea of you holding the paper is to check him
up if he makes a mistake. Anyways, this bird let me in among a flock of
busted-looking pieces of machinery and begun talking fast. At first, I
didn't get him at all; but when I got sort of used to it I realized he
was saying something like this:

"The crank shaft is a steel drop-forging having arms extending from
center of shaft according to number of cylinders. It is used to change
the reciprocating movement of the piston into a rotary motion of the
flywheel; it has a starting handle at one end and the flywheel at the
other, as you observe. We will now pass on to the exhaust manifold,
which is generally constructed of cast iron; it conducts the burned
gases from the exhaust valve . . ."

"Hold on!" I says. "Exhaust is right! I'm exhausted this minute. If you
don't mind I'd like to sit down and talk sense, instead of listening to
a phonograph monologue in a foreign language."

The instructor bird seemed sort of winded by this; but he got a couple
of chairs and pretty soon we was sitting in a quiet corner talking like
we'd both been on the same circuit for five years.

"Now listen here, brother," I says real earnest; "I want to learn this
stuff, and learn it right! And I want you to stick by me and see me
through, same as you would any male man that come in here to learn to be
a chauffeur. Now take it easy and make me get it, and I'll play square
and do my best to understand, without no nonsense."

"Say, you bet I will, Miss La Tour!" says this bird, who, married or
not, had some spirit in him yet. "You bet I will! You see, a lot of
dames come in here just because they ain't got nothing else to do. And
you yourself must realize that a guy can only go through the motions
when that's all they want."

Well, I could see that plain enough, and from then on we got along like
a new team of partners with equal money in the act and going big on
thirty straight weeks' booking. And--believe you me--there is a awful
lot of interesting things about a auto; only you would never suspect it
until you start to look at what is under the hood and body. As to
understanding them all, you couldn't get it all off of no twenty sheets
of yellow paper, nor twenty hundred, either! It's a career, really
understanding a machine is; just the same as being a expert dancer. The
guy that invented all them parts and got them working together certainly
must of set up nights doing it.

Well, anyways, after two hours of lapping up this dope I got so's I
could actually tell the cam shaft from the crank shaft and the
difference between a cycle and a cylinder, which was enough for one day.
And then I rode home to Ma.

Actually I had almost forgot to be miserable about Jim for two whole
hours! But when I got home, and he hadn't phoned to apologize yet, it
all came back over me, and I simply felt that, automobiles and
enlistments or no, I wanted to die--just die! I cried so bad that even
Ma couldn't make me mind, and I was so tired I couldn't even taste the
hot cakes she had fixed. I do believe Ma would think of cooking
something tasty if the world was coming to a end the next minute. She'd
be afraid the recording angel would need a sandwich and a cup of hot
coffee to keep him going while he was on the job.

But, anyways, they couldn't do nothing to me, or get me to go to the
Ritz or the theater much less the midnight show; but the last did not
matter, because I was wore out and asleep long before. And so Ma had to
telephone that Miss La Tour was suddenly ill and unable to appear. I
made her swear not to phone Jim nor let him in nor Roscoe, the publicity
man, if they was to come--not on no account. And so I slept--poor
child!--worn by the tossing of the cruel ocean of life--do you get me?

Well, next morning I was up long before Musette, and would of been
obliged to dress unaided, only for Ma never having got used to sleeping
late, partly on account of her always taking a nap just after the
matinée performance when with the circus, and still continuing the
habit. So Ma give me my coffee and a big kiss, and promised not to tell
Jim nothing if he telephoned and I set off to be at the hospital at nine
A. M., according to orders from Miss Lieutenant.

Well, there has always been something about a hospital I didn't care for
much; not that I have went to many--only the night Jim got bit by the
alligator; and once, when me and Jim was first engaged, he had a dog
which we had to take to the dog hospital. But--believe you me--this St.
Timothy's Hospital, was quite different from the dog hospital. It was a
whole lot more like a swell hotel, with porters and bell boys and clerks
and elevators, and everything except a café, as far as I could make out;
and I'm not sure about that, but I don't suppose they had it.

I was so scared of being late that I was a little early and had to wait
in a office. Pretty soon two or three other rookies come in; and, being
ladies, of course we didn't dare to speak to each other at first. And
then the ladies of the Automobile Service commenced coming in, wearing
their uniforms. And were they a fine-looking lot? They were! I sure did
wish I had a right to that costume; and I had a feeling that my heart
wouldn't hurt near so bad, even when thinking of Jim, once it was
beating under that snappy-looking uniform coat in Uncle Sam's
service--do you get me?

Well, about this time we were let go upstairs in one of them regular
hotel elevators, the rookies still scared, the regular members in good
standing talking among theirselves, though several spoke to me nice and
friendly; in particular, the little frowzy one which had been reading
the book the day before in the office, but wasn't at all sloppy in her
uniform.

Believe you me, I had a awful funny feeling in the middle of my stomach
going up in that elevator, and not for the same reason as the
Metropolitan Tower or any of them tall buildings, either. It was because
of not knowing what was ahead of me and preparing for the worst. After
I'd seen the kind of stuff them lady soldiers had to learn in the auto
shop, it seemed like about anything might be expected of them in a mere
hospital. So I got myself all braced up so's if I had to cut off a leg,
or extract a tooth or anything, I'd be able to go to it and not bat an
eye-lash--not outwardly, anyway.

But things is seldom as bad as you figure in advance--not even
first-night performances. And the stuff which was actually put up to us
was simple as a ordinary one-step. At least, it looked so from a
distance. By distance I mean this: When the nursing instructor--a lady
in a white dress, with the darndest-looking little soubrette cap stuck
'way on the back of her head--when she stood up in front of the lot of
us and put a Velpeau bandage--which is French for sling, I guess, and
looks it--on one of the lady soldiers who was acting as mannequin, why,
it looked easy.

While she was putting it on she handed us a line of talk something like
that bird at the auto school, only not so fluent. And when she got
through it was up to the rest of us to put the Velpeau bandages on each
other. Gawd knows it was no cinch.

First, I set down, and a girl in uniform asked could she wrap me up.
Well, it just naturally rumpled my Georgette blouse; but what's a blouse
to a patriot? I let her go to it, and she done it so good and so quick
that it was all over before I knew it, as the dentist says; and then it
was up to me. Somebody give me a nice new roll of bandage and told me to
get a model.

Well, I didn't have the nerve to ask any one, me being so new and the
name Marie La Tour not meaning anything to nobody here. And so here was
me standing round like a fool, not knowing how to commence, when up
comes that lady--her which had been so sloppy reading a book in the
office.

"Can't I be your model?" she offered, and--believe you me--I could of
almost cried, I was so glad to have somebody take notice of me.

I liked that dame more each time I seen her; she sure was refined. Even
her sloppiness was refined--do you get me?

Well, as to real work, that sheaf of yellow papers up to the auto school
had nothing on the bandaging game when it come to understanding it
properly. Believe you me, that bandage had a will of its own, and the
only way to make it mind would of been to step on it and kill it. But
after a little I managed to tie up the lady pretty good, and before I
was done I had my mind made up that Musette had lost her regular job and
was going to be a bandage mannequin from that P. M. on until I got the
hang of the thing.

Well, when the scramble of putting on the bandage was over and past, we
was told that after we got on to the theory we'd be sent down to the
Charity Ward for two solid weeks and practice what we'd learned.

Well, I thought, if I ever get there Gawd help the charity patients! I
guess the two weeks won't qualify me for the Auto Service. More likely
I'll be ready for the Battalion of Death, or whatever they call them
Russian women!

Well, when the bandages was all gathered up we was dismissed, as they
call it, and told to report for drill in a certain place in the park, it
being a fine day.

I must say I didn't think a whole lot of the hospital end of the game,
because it wasn't pleasant. Of course I had no intention to quit in any
way, but it sort of depressed me, what with all that sickness going on
round me and the talk about wounds and bandages. And so my mind wasn't
took off Jim, like it was by the auto work, me having a heart which
needed a little bandaging--only that can't be done, of course.


IV

WELL, on the way home I cried some more. And well I might. For when I
got there had Jim phoned? He had not! Nobody but Goldringer, the
manager, and Roscoe, the publicity man, and a few unimportant nuts like
that, and some of the newspapers. Ma had stalled them off pretty good by
saying it was impossible to disturb me.

And it seems these people hadn't been able to locate Jim anywheres,
either. At first that sounded sort of funny to me; but when I come to
think it over I realized about his nose, where the alligator had bit him
and the doctor had put on the brown stuff, from which he wouldn't
naturally care to be seen--only no one could say that it would prevent
him using the phone, which I also realized.

Well, after I eat a little liver and bacon, and so on, which Ma had
fixed for me, and cried some, which made me feel better again, I started
out for drill; which means that now comes the real important part of
what happened and the true measure of the tale, as the poet says.

Well, it seems we rookies--and I must pause to mention that I don't like
that word rookies; it sounds like something that would get the hook
amateur nights. Well, as I was saying, we rookies was told to report at
three o'clock for a private drill, all of our very own. But I was on to
the fact that the regular members in good standing would be there ahead
of us to do well what we was about to do badly. So I thought I would go
early and sit out in front, or whatever was the same thing, and try and
get a line on how it was done.

Believe you me, there ain't many steps I can't get by seeing them done
once; and if I was to of gone up to the Palace and watch Castle, or Rock
and White, or any one of them, when I come away I could do the steps
they pulled as good as if I had invented them!

Well, this was my idea in going up and seeing the ladies drill. So there
I was at the park bright and early on a fine sunny afternoon, with the
ladies all in uniform. But I wasn't in any too much time, for I'd no
sooner got there than a big roughneck of a feller--a regular U. S. drill
sergeant, I found out after--come up and yelled: "Fall in!" Just as rude
as any stage director I ever seen! But the ladies didn't seem to mind a
bit. They didn't fall into nothing though; they just hustled into line
and stood there.

"Ten-shun!" says the feller. And they all stood like a chorus when the
stage manager is telling them he is going to quit the show if they don't
learn no better, and they're a bunch of fatheads, and he's going to get
them fired. In other words, they stood perfectly still.

Well, after that it was something grand, what those ladies did. I will
say that when I come down to the park that afternoon I thought maybe I'd
see some pretty fair chorus work; you know--formations, and etc. But
this was no chorus work, it was soldiering. I never seen anything neater
in my life. Was it snappy? It was! And when I thought how that bunch of
ladies knew all about autos from soup to nuts, and about bandages, and
etc., believe you me--that drill was the finishing touch.

For once in my life, I was anxious to be in the chorus, even in the back
line. But not forever--not much! Believe you me, I made up my mind that,
once I was really in it, I was going to work for a speaking part like I
never worked before. And meantime I started in that direction by trying
to figure out just what the ladies did when the stage manager--I mean,
officer--hollered at them. And--believe you me--I had the
turn-on-the-heel and push-off-with-the-toe idea on that right-and-left
face stuff long before the regular members in good standing was
dismissed and we lady rookies was called.

Well, the same roughneck which had drilled the others had us simps
wished on to him; and the first thing he done was to get us in a row
--you couldn't properly call it a line--and then stand out in front and
look at us sort of hopeless and discouraged, like a good director which
has just finished with a bunch of old-timers and is starting with green
material for the back row. Then he commenced talking.

Well, while this bird was getting off a line of talk about us now being
soldiers of the U. S. A. and that being no joke to him or us, and etc.,
and etc., but no instructions in it, I let my mind wander just a little,
on account of me having enlisted for deeper reasons than any he
mentioned and him quite incapable of strengthening them.

And while my mind wandered this little bit, and I was thinking how funny
it felt to be back in the chorus--do you get me?--I happened to take a
look at the houses facing the park. And--believe you me--I got a jolt,
for there we was standing right opposite Ruby Rosalie's house!

Well, I was that astonished to realize it you could of knocked me over
with a sudden noise! Up to then I had been so interested in the other
ladies and what they was doing I hadn't even noticed it.

And then, before I could really commence to think what a awful thing it
would be if Ruby was to look out of the window and see me standing
there, and think I was just in some chorus, and maybe that nasty Von
Hoffman with her, and the both of them laughing their fool heads off,
the officer says "Ten-shun!" he says. And, of course, I tenshuned,
because of me being anxious to get everything he said when it come to
instruction, and get it right.

Well, he told us a lot of dope on one thing at a time after he had got
us in line, with the tallest at the right hand, which was me. And he
told us very simple and then made us do it; and no camouflage,
because--believe you me--he could spot any lady which done it wrong
quick as a flash.

I will say he didn't have a whole lot of trouble with me, partly on
account of me having had similar work before, and also my feet taking to
new things so easy. But it took me about ten minutes to see that my
patent Oxfords, with the Looie heels, was never going to do for this
work. Though I hate to say it, the other ladies sure did bother him a
lot. They couldn't seem to mind quick enough. And he had a lot of
trouble making them keep at attention.

Every time we'd be that way, just to show what I mean, the lady next to
me would forget and powder her nose. Oh, that wasn't no new sight to me!
I seen worse in my day until they get used to it. But did that officer
get mad? He did!

"Whatter ye think ye're at?" he yells. "A pink tea? Cut that stuff now!
Attention is attention and youse is standing at it," he says. "The worst
crime youse can commit is move without permission."

And--believe you me--I sympathized with him, I did, little knowing what
I was about to do next my ownself.

Alas, that in ladies obedience comes so much harder than following out a
impulse! For the officer had no sooner uttered them words, and I agreed
with him, than I went back on him something terrible.

It was this way: As I explained, we was drilling in the park, and not
alone in the park but also opposite Ruby Roselle's house. Well, of
course, we was drilling on a open piece of grass, but at one side of
this here grass was fancy bushes; you know--hedges and what not. And me,
being on the end of the line, was nearest them bushes.

Well, as the sergeant was speaking I seen something move under one of
them bushes; and, as Heaven is my witness, there was that pro-German
alligator which had bit Jim on the nose and started all my troubles.
There he was, walking very slowly, gold-and-diamond collar and all, and
by his lone self, with nobody to protect him!

Well, I never stopped to think or salute, or ask nothing of nobody. All
I knew for the time was that that damn alligator had somehow got out on
his own, and that this was the chance of a lifetime. So, without more
ado, I fell right out of attention and rushed over and reached into the
bushes and grabbed the alligator by the tail.

Well, the officer hollered something at me, I don't know what, and all
the ladies commenced screaming. And was I scared of that alligator? I
was! But I held him up by the tail, and it didn't take me two minutes to
find out that he couldn't bite me that way; and then my scare was gone.

I felt so good about getting him I didn't even care much what was being
said at me by the drill sergeant. I just stood there holding tight to
the alligator's tail and grinning all over myself. But up come Miss
Lieutenant, who had been watching our drill--the one which had signed me
up--and she was as mad as a hornet, only having a awful time trying not
to laugh.

"What's this?" she says, indignant.

Fortunately the alligator was in my left hand; so I saluted.

"Enemy alien alligator!" I says.

"Dismissed from the ranks!" she says. "And report to Sergeant Warner at
Headquarters at five o'clock."

Gee, but that made me feel bad! But she wouldn't listen to no
explanations at all, and there was nothing for me to do except walk off
to where the limousine was waiting. And, in a way, I was glad, because
suppose Ruby had of looked out and saw the alligator in my hand! I
couldn't of got away with him.

As things went, I got him safe into the limousine. And--believe you
me--I didn't dare set him down for a minute for fear of his trying to
get even with me; and so I was obliged to hold him at arm's length until
we got home, which it is a good thing that it wasn't very far.

Well, when we got home you ought to of seen the elevator boys get out of
the way! I walked in holding on to the alligator; and once I got to the
flat there was Ma sitting in the Looie-the-Head-Waiter drawing-room,
reading a cook-book. When she seen what I had I must say that for once
she acted kind of surprised.

Of course, she ain't usually surprised, not after her having twice seen
sudden death in the center ring, and the circus went on just the same.
But alligators coming in unexpected is rather out of the usual. So Ma
marked her place at sauces for fish, and took off her glasses so's she
could see good, and give me the kind of stare she used to hand out when
I got dirt on my Sunday-school dress.

"Why, Mary Gilligan!" she says. "For the land's sakes, where did you get
that?"

"Caught it on the wing!" I says, very sarcastic, on account of my arm
being nearly broke. "Can you cook it for supper?" I says.

"Well," she says. "I guess I can. What is it? A mock turtle?"

"It's a pro-German alligator," I says. "And if you'll just kindly help
me instead of standing there staring at it, we'll intern it some place
so's I can leave my arm get a rest."

Well, we certainly had a fierce time finding something to put him in,
owing to us not being able to agree about what kind of a place he
belonged. Ma was all for the goldfish bowl, claiming it was his native
element; and Musette, who come in, thought the canary cage was better.
But, realizing he couldn't jump very high, I had them get a big hat-box,
and set him in that.

"And now what are you going to do with him?" says Ma as we all stood
'round looking at him; and my two fool dogs barking their heads off on
account of a mistaken idea they had that he was a new pet. "What are you
going to do with him?" says Ma.

"Unless you cook him, I don't know," I says--"except for one thing: I'm
going to take that gold-and-diamond collar offen that brute and sell it
and give the money to the American Red Cross; and I'm going to do it
now!"

Believe you me, I was mad at that alligator! And no wonder! Just look
at all the trouble he made me! So I didn't waste any time getting action
against him. First off, I persuaded Ma, who was real brave, to hold a
ice pick down on his nose good and firm, so's he couldn't open his face.
Then I managed, after a lot of trouble, to get that bejeweled sinful
collar off his neck. And was it a swell collar? It was!

As soon as I had it off we just left that alligator interned in the
hat-box and looked the collar over good. It was made all of a piece and
the jewels were certainly wonderful. I know quite a lot about them, me
and Ma always having invested that way when we had a little extra cash.

Well, as we was looking the stones over carefully, I happened to rub one
which was close to the snap, sort of sideways, and right off something
happened: That there collar parted--yes, sir; parted!--the lining from
the outside, and in the place between the setting and the inside frame
was a couple of thin slips of paper!

Well--believe you me--it didn't take me long to get the idea; not after
having a father and a mother which had been in the circus and had to
think quick, and me having been associated with dramatic stuff all my
life--do you get me? You do!

What with that collar having come off a alligator which I was already
convinced was a pro-German, and knowing Von Hoffman had give it to Ruby
Roselle, and got her to sing Overseas in that nasty costume made out of
the national colors, which should never be done, I seen everything
clear. Von Hoffman had a German job of some kind!

And when I unfolded those papers and seen they was full of funny little
marks like a stenographer makes and then can't read, I realized that I
had happened in on it; and so will any intelligent public.

Well, was Ma and Musette full of questions? They was! But I didn't wait
to answer none of them; for I realized, also, that it was almost five
o'clock, and I was supposed to report at Headquarters for a bawling-out
at that time. And, after me having broken the rules once, I had no wish
to do it again so soon.

Well, I just grabbed up the collar and the papers, and a clean pair of
gloves, as the alligator had completely ruined what I had, and, having
on my hat, waited not to explain, but made a dash for the street. And
by a big piece of luck there was the limousine, still standing outside
on account of I having forgot to tell John to go. Well, I told him
"Headquarters!" and off we started; and I got there just on the dot of
five o'clock.

Well, Miss Lieutenant was there, and a Miss Sergeant--the one I was
reporting to--and that frowzy-looking lady I have spoke of before, and
several other ladies, still in their uniforms. And while I was
explaining, in comes the captain, which she certainly is a smart woman.
And they all listened while I reported and told the whole story about
Ruby and me and Jim and Von Hoffman and the alligator. Then I saluted
and handed over said collar and papers in evidence; and then the captain
spoke up:

"This material, which is undoubtedly in a foreign code, will be of
interest to the Secret Service," she says. "This Von Hoffman is probably
one of those persons who are active in the obviously deliberate effort
to cheapen and degrade the quality of our patriotism," she says; "for I
have heard that is part of the German propaganda here."

"Private La Tour, in view of the unusual circumstances, you are excused
for your action in leaving ranks without permission," she says; "but
next time remember to get your salute recognized," she says--"even under
extreme conditions."

Then she went on, and she says:

"I understand you have given your car," she says. "Some member in
uniform will take this evidence downtown in Private La Tour's car," she
says, "which we now accept for the service."

Then she walked into her office, which said Private on it, and closed
the door; and I watched one of the ladies in uniform go away, with the
collar and the papers, in my limousine.

And after she had went I got a terrible scare, for it come over me all
of a sudden that I hadn't even a nickel change on me to buy car fare
home!

Well, just as I was standing there wondering how I was going to hoof it
after the trying day I had had, that frowzy lady comes up to me, real
kind, like she could almost see what I was thinking of; and she says:

"May I take you home in my car, Miss La Tour?" she says. "I have seen
you dance so often that I feel as though I knew you. I am Mrs. Pieter
van Norden."

Just get that, will you, will you? Her that I had been modeling myself
on for refinement for years! And--would you believe it?--on the way home
she told me she had been trying to dance like me since the first time
she seen me!

Well--believe you me--I felt so good over this, and over having got the
goods on Von Hoffman, and about being excused for making that bad break
at drill, and not getting fired out of the Automobile Service, that I
only commenced feeling bad about Jim and me again after Mrs. Van Norden
had left me at the door of my place, and I was going up in the elevator.

As I was letting myself in with my key I got so low in my mind again
that I felt I would just die if Jim hadn't phoned; and I knew he hadn't,
for I'd given up hope. Well, I opened the door and went in. And then I
got another shock; for right in the middle of the drawing-room stood
Jim.

Well, first off, I didn't know him on account of him being in khaki; but
when he turned around I nearly died for sure! But I didn't actually die.
What I done is nobody's business but mine and Jim's. But I will say it
was a second lieutenant-of-aviation uniform; and they show powder on the
shoulder something terrible.

And he had been studying for months; and that's where he was every
afternoon, and not out with some blonde, and wouldn't tell me for fear
he wouldn't get it!

And I'm going to dance alone at night until he comes back, and all day
drive a truck or something to release a man. And that's the whole inside
story of the split, which is now readily seen is not a fight at all, at
least not yet for we got married at once.

So, only one thing more: Regarding that alligator, Ma decided he would
be too hard to cook. So Jim took him to camp for a mascot, and by the
time he got through there he learned to understand American--believe you
me!




II

PRO BONEHEAD PUBLICO


I

AIN'T it remarkable the way the war has changed the way we look at a
whole lot of things? Take wrist-watches for one. Before the military
idea was going so strong on its present booking but a little while,
wrist-watches had grabbed off a masculine standing for themselves, and
six months before no real man would of been willingly found dead in one!

Then take newspapers! Oncet we used to look at them for news, and now we
just look at them. It's kind of a nervous habit, I guess. And take
simple little things like coal and sugar. Why once we paid no attention
to them and now we look at them real respectful--when we see them.
Which leads me on to say that the war has brought us to look at a great
many things we never even seen before, not if they was right under our
noses. That's how I come to see that letter from the W.S.S.
Committee--and would to Heaven I had not, as the poet says. For
although--believe you me--most of the mail order goods a person buys is
pretty apt to be as rep. because why would a customer write again which
had been stung once, and thrift stamps is no exception, it certainly
will be a long time before I fall so easy for anything the postman slips
me. Next time I'll recognize that his whistle is a note of warning to
more than them which has unpaid bills, which I have not and so never
listened for him.

Well, anyways, the time this little trouble maker reached my side, I had
slipped into a simple little lounging suit of pink georgette pajamas,
and was lying on the day-bed in a regular wallow of misery on account of
wondering if Jim was dead on the gory fields of France, or was it only
the censor--do you get me? I was laying there rubbing a little cold
cream onto my nose and thinking how would it feel to be always able to
do so without losing my husband's love, which, of course, would mean he
had died at the front, when in comes Ma with a couple of letters. I give
one shriek and sprung to my feet, like a regular small-time drama, and
grabbed them off her, cold cream and all. And then slunk back upon the
day-bed and despair when I seen they weren't from Jim. Ma stood there
with her hands on her hips until she seen I wasn't going to break any
bad news to her, when she left me in peace to read them. That is she
meant to, but believe you me, it was far from it as Ma went into our
all-paid-for gold furnished parlour and commenced playing on the pianola
which Jim had give me for a souvenir before he sailed, and Ma, being
sort of heavy and strong, after twenty-five years with a circus, she has
a fierce touch.

Well, anyways, after she had got "Soft and Low" going strong with the
loud pedal and no expression, I opened the first envelope. It was my
copy of my new contract with Goldringer all signed and everything and
calling for only twenty minutes of my first class A-1 parlour dancing
act in his new musical show at the Springtime Garden entitled "Go To It"
and which let all persons know that the party of the first part
hereinafter called the manager was willing and able to pay Miss Marie La
Tour, party of the second ditto, one thousand dollars a week. Which
certainly was _some_ party to look foreward to and scarcely any work to
speak of, a refined act like mine not calling for over three handsprings
and some new steps, which is second nature to me and I generally make up
a few every night for my own amusement same as some of those fellows
which play the piano by hand--do you get me?

Well, anyways, when I had looked the contract over good and seen it
really was, as I had before realized in the office, more than
satisfactory, I salted it away in my toy safe which was nicely built
into the mantel-piece for the greater convenience of burglars, and then
I remembered the other envelope. All unsuspecting as a table d'hote
guest, I opened the envelope, and then almost dropped dead.

It was from President Wilson!

Believe you me, I leaned up against the art-gray wall paper and prepared
to faint after I had read the news. But instead of commencing, "I regret
to inform you of the death in battle," or something like that, it
started:


    "THE WHITE HOUSE,
    "Washington, D. C.

     "I earnestly appeal to every man, woman and child to pledge
     themselves to save constantly and to buy as regularly as possible
     the securities of the Government; and to do this as far as possible
     through membership in War Savings Societies.

     "The man who buys War Savings Stamps transfers his purchasing power
     to the United States Government.

     "May there be none unenlisted in the great volunteer army of
     production and saving here at home.

    "WOODROW WILSON."


Woodrow Wilson! Signed--and addressed to _me!_ Of course it didn't
exactly begin "Dear Miss La Tour" or anything like that, and he had
signed it with a rubber stamp or something which I did not hold against
him in the least, me realizing at once what a busy man he must be. But
coming as it done instead of a death-notice which I had by this time
fully expected after no letter for over a month, it got to me very
strong. It made me feel all of a sudden that I was a pretty punk patriot
lounging around in pink georgette pajamas which--believe you me--is no
costume for war-work and felt like going right off and borrowing one of
the gingham house-dresses which I have never been able to break Ma of,
only, of course, it would of been too big and anyways what would I of
done after I had it pinned around me? Which could be said of a whole lot
of folks which were rushing into uniforms of their own inventing.

Well, anyways, after the first shock was over, I seen there was an
enclosure with the President's letter. This was from some committee
which had a big W.S.S. lable printed at the top and a piece out of the
social register printed underneath, and was dated N. Y. It begun more
personal.

"Dear Miss La Tour," it said. "As a woman so prominent in the theatrical
world, we feel sure that you would be glad to take an active interest in
the great Thrift movement which is now before the country. Will you not
form a theatrical women's committee that will pledge the sale of
twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of stamps on the first of the month?
The first of every month will be observed as Thrift Stamp Day, and we
will be glad to furnish you with all literature, stamps, etc., if you
will notify headquarters of your willingness to do this work."

The letter was signed by some guy which it was impossible to read his
name because he hadn't used no rubber stamp but did it by hand and had
other things on his mind. But did I care? I did not! Believe you me, I
had already decided to do like he asked, and why would I need to know
his name when I wasn't going to write to him anyways, but to Mr. Wilson?
Dancing as long as I have which is about fifteen years or since I could
walk, pretty near, and not only professionally but drawing my own
contracts from the time most sweet young things is thinking over their
graduation dresses, I have learned one thing, if no other. Always do
business with the boss. Refuse to talk to all office boys, get friendly
with the lady stenographer, if there is one, but do all business with
the one at the head--and no other! This motto has saved me no end of
time which has been spent in healthy exercise under my own roof and Ma's
eagle eye, which otherwise might have wore out the seats of
outside-office chairs.

And so I concluded that I'd sit right down that minute and let Mr.
Wilson know I was on the job. I knew I had some writing paper someplace
and after I had took a lot of powder and chamois and old asperin
tablets out of the desk I dug it up:--a box of handsome velour-finish
tinted slightly pink, with envelopes to match. And I got hold of a pen
and some ink which Musette, my maid, had overlooked, she being a great
writer to her young man which is French and Gawd knows how fluent she
writes him in it, only of course being born over there certainly makes a
difference.

Well, anyways, I cleaned off the desk and rubbed the cream off my nose
and hands and set down to write that letter. And--believe you me--it was
some job. I guess I must of commenced a dozen times and tore them up
with formal openings--do you get me? And then I realized that the box of
pink tinted was getting sort of low and I had better waste not want not,
and so determined to just be natural in what I wrote but not take up his
time with too long a letter. So at last I threw in the clutch, gave
myself a little gas, and we was off, to this effect.

     "My dear Mr. Wilson:--

     "Many thanks for yours of the 25th inst. Will at once get busy at
     helping to make the first of the month savings day instead of
     unpaid-bill day.

    "Cordially,
    "MARIE LA TOUR."


This seemed refined and to the point, and although I was awful tempted
to put a P.S. asking did they know anything about Jim, I left off on
account of me not believing in asking personal favors of the Government
just now, as the war office was probably medium busy and the Censor
might answer first, at that. So I just sealed it up as it was, and about
then Ma left off playing on my souvenir and came in with a pink satin
boudoir cap down tight over her head. Ma just can't seem to get over the
idea that boudoir caps at five dollars and up per each is a sort of de
lux housework garment.

"I'm just going in the kitchen and beat up a few cakes for lunch," said
Ma, and withdrew, leaving me to lick on three cents and shoot the letter
fatefully and finally down the drop near the gilt-bird-cage elevator of
our home-like little flat. I felt awfully relieved and chesty somehow
when it was done and with her good news ringing in my ears. For Ma is
certainly some cook, and she has it all over our chef, who--believe you
me--knows she would never be missed if she went although Ma simply can't
learn to stay out of the kitchen. And while she was busy with the butter
and eggs and sugar and wheat flour, I was deciding to call a committee,
because I knew that was the way you generally start raising twenty-five
thousand dollars worth of anything, except a personal note.

Committee meetings is comparative strangers to me except the White
Kittens Annual Ball, and a few benefit performances which last is
usually for the benefit of those which are to be in it, they leaving
aside all consideration of the benefit of the audience much less of the
charity it is supposed to be for, and the main idea being how long each
actor can hold the spotlight. You may have noticed how these benefit
performances runs on for hours.

Well, anyways, I having been to several such as of course the best known
parlour dancing act in America and the world, like mine undoubtedly is,
is never overlooked. And I knew we had to get a place with a big table
and chairs set around it and then the committee was started. So the
White Kittens always having met in the Grand Ball Room of the Palatial
Hotel, I called up the place and hired the room for the next morning at
twelve-thirty, me being determined that my Theatrical Ladies Committee
should get there directly after breakfast. The cost of the room was one
hundred dollars, and I didn't know was the Government to pay it or us,
but I was, of course, willing to do it myself if necessary. Anyways it
was a committee-room, I knew that by reason of my having sat in it as
such at least twice each year since the place was built--way back in
'13. Then all I had to do was get my committee.

I had just about dived for the telephone book to see who would I call
up, when Ma come in, taking off the pink satin cap and wiping her face.

"I made a omlette," said Ma. "Come catch it before it falls!"

And so I called it the noon-whistle though some might of called it a
day, and we went in and while we ate only a simple little lunch of the
omlette (which we got at first base) and liver and bacon and cold roast
beef and a few stewed prunes with the fresh cake, I told Ma about what
had happened, and how I had already got after the job.

"Well, Mary Gilligan, you done the right thing!" said Ma. "And what kind
of costume are you going to wear?"

"The notices don't say anything about a uniform," I explained to her.
"And I'm pretty sure you don't need any. This is the sort of thing our
leading society swells are taking up so heavy," I says, "and to do it is
not only patriotic but feminine to the core," I says.

"Will you have to stand on the street-corners and worry the life out of
folks?" Ma wanted to know.

"Not much!" I says. "That stuff is for the hoi-poli and idle rich and
kids and unemployed. That's where some of the new democracy comes in. Us
with brains is to do the office work. Them with good hearts only can do
theirselves and the country more service in the stores and street-cars
selling something that don't belong to them," I says, "and--believe you
me--I bet any American gets a funny sensation doing that little thing."

Ma looked real impressed for a minute, showing she hadn't any idea what
I was talking about. Then she come back to her main idea with which she
had started which you can bet she always does until she gets through
with it her own self.

"Well, I think you ought to have something for a uniform," she says.
"Say a cap and maybe a trench coat!"

"I wouldn't wear no trench coat around the Forty-Second Street and
Broadway trenches," I says. "I wouldn't actually have the nerve to
insult the army like that!"

And Ma seen what I meant and said no more which it certainly is
remarkable how good we get on for Mother and daughter.

So she only urged me to have another cream-cake, which I took and then I
made for the phone and started calling up some ladies to form the
committee out of. After thinking the matter over very careful I finally
decided on six of the most prominent in my line which was, of course,
the Dahlia sisters which had been often on the same bill with me and, of
course, they ain't really related--no such team work as theirs was ever
pulled by members of the same family, unless maybe when knocking some
absent member--do you get me? Well, anyways, beside them I got Madame
Clementina Broun, the well known Lady Baritone, she being a rather
substantial party which would give weight to us in cabaret circles. Of
course Pattie The Dancer had to be asked, she being so prominent
especially as to her tights and strong pull with Goldringer but I only
done it out of diplomacy, which any one knows committees has to have a
lot of. And she is less diplomatic than me as well, for instead of just
accepting for her own self she accepts also for some friends which I had
not invited, and she did not name. Pattie is alias Mrs. Fred
Hutchins--him who gets up those reviews--you know--which is the only
reason she is starred in them for Gawd only knows a child which had been
started anywheres near right could of done her steps at the age of
seven, they being mere hard-sole clog with no arm movements but having a
great many imitators among college boys and such, that scare-crow stuff
being as showy as it is easy.


Well, anyways, when I had got this far I had one vacancy on my hands and
as our Allies was not sufficiently represented so far, decided on Mlle.
DuChamps which of course she was really born in Paris, Indiana, but as a
toe-dancer is unequalled in any language and has a lovely broken
accent. So there we had France. Madame Clementia was married to a
Italian and he being dead or something I never asked what I felt she was
a safe Ally because she couldn't of revolted, not if a schrapnel was to
have went off under her. Pattie was of course Irish and the Dahlias'
Jewish, and Gawd knows what the other girl was and I didn't care.


II

WHEN they had all promised to get theirselves waked up on time and be
over to the Palatial, I kind of weakened on Ma's suggestion about
clothes. Of course I wasn't going to fall for that uniform stuff, but
when me and Musette looked over my clothes I simply didn't have a thing
to wear. Every one of my dresses was too morning or evening or something
and above all things I do believe in dressing a part, and certainly I
had nothing which looked like a chairmaness. So after getting into a
simple little sports costume of violet satin and my summer furs, and
taking a peep into the mail box to see had anything got by the censor
yet which of course it hadn't, I started out to buy me something which
would be quiet but tasty and snappy because nothing inspires respect in
a ladies committee like a dress none of them has seen before.

Have you ever noticed how you can pass up something which has been right
under your nose day after day and then all of a sudden you hitch on to
something which belongs to it and then all you see is that thing--do you
get me? Say yellow kid boots. You never even noticed a pair, but one day
you buy them and next time you're out every second woman has them on. Or
you go into mourning for somebody and all of a sudden you commence
noticing how many other people is the same only of course there ain't
over the average--it's only that you notice it because you are in it.
Well, believe you me--that first afternoon I went out after receiving
the President's letter, I was that way with this W.S.S. stuff. Of course
I had bought my thousand dollars worth the first week they was out, as
had also Ma and she and I together the same for Musette. But we had done
it on the Liberty Loans the same, also Red Cross and thought we was
through and all the signs and posters and what not had come to be
invisible to me like a chewing-gum or a soap ad--do you get me?

But now I was in it and not only did I see every sign and see them good,
but felt like I had one on my back and everybody must know about the
letter and everything. I walked kind of springy, too, in spite of the
furs, and then when I turned into the Avenue, me being on foot, a five
mile walk per day having to be got away with by me or Ma would know the
reason why, the trouble commenced. Believe you me, I must of refused to
buy thrift stamps one hundred times in twenty blocks, and every time I
said I had all I could, the look I got handed me would have withered a
publicity man. There must be a hot lot of fancy liars among us, with no
imagination, for why would W.S.S. still be on sale if everybody had
bought that much? And when I wasn't refusing to buy stamps I was forking
out quarters for everything from blind Belgian hares to Welch Rabbits
for German prisoners. And it's a good thing I had a charge account to
Maison Rosabelle's or I would never of got my dress. And the more I was
pestered to buy them stamps the madder I got. I commenced to feel it was
a regular hold up, and that the police ought to interfere. A person
which is pestered to death will even sour on the Red Cross. I don't mean
that they ain't humane, neither--only that they are human, and the most
dangerous thing to do to a human is to bore it--any one in the
theatrical professions learns that young and thoroughly. And when I
realized that I was getting bored with this constant hold-up I got a
fearful jolt and a cold chill.

Here I was undertaking to chair a committee to sell the things and Gawd
knows my heart ought to of been in it with Jim over there and all, and
it was, only getting bored with the war is kind of natural, it being so
far off and nothing likely to do us personal bodily injury on the Avenue
unless maybe the restaurants or a auto and that our own fault. And so
soon as I realized what I was up against with the great Boredom Peril, I
realized also what I had personally in writing promised Mr. Wilson, and
took a brace. It was just like the early days on the Small-Time when the
booking depends on the hand and the hand was the one which fed us--and
not any too much at that with the carrying expenses--and the hand was
getting weaker. Me and Ma sat up all one night doping out my double
handspring with the heel-click. And it was a desperate effort and we
thought it was a flivver but not at all. When I landed on my feet after
the first try-out, I knew I was there to stay, and any intelligent
public will realize that I remembered it now. And by this time I had
reached the store I was headed for.


I will confess that from the moment I had decided to buy a new dress I
had my mind all set on what it was to be--something sheer and
light--printed chiffon, and a hat to go with it. But by the time I had
reached Maison Rosabelle my hunch on my new job was beginning to go
strong and one of the things that worried me was that dress. Also my
lunch. Sometimes it happens that too much of a good thing is the only
thing which will turn you against it--do you get me? And Ma's cream
cakes had this effect. Maybe had I eat less of them I would not have had
no indigestion and so not counted their cost as Lincoln, or somebody,
says. And if I hadn't had the indigestion maybe I wouldn't of worried
over the dress. Well, anyways, the first person I see inside the store
was Maison herself, very elegant and slim, only with a little too much
henna in her hair as usual.

"Well, Masie," I said when we had got into the privacy of the art-gray
dressing room and lit a cigarette, while the girl went for some models.
"Well, Masie, I want to know is business good?" Masie is her real name
she having Frenchified it for business reasons, the same as myself.

"Oh, dearie!" says she. "Business is elegant! With so many officers in
town, I can scarcely keep enough things in stock. The beaded georgettes
go so fast, on account of being perishable. Ruby Roselle had three last
week of me. One party and they're gone!"

While Masie and me has been friends ever since I can remember, her
mother having been Lady Lion Tamer in the same circus with Ma and Pa's
trapeze act, as she uttered them words, I commenced feeling a little
coolness toward her. For once I get a idea in my head it's a religion to
me, and the W.S.S. was getting to me.

"Dont you think maybe that's profiteering, Masie?" I ast.

Maison run a well manicured hand over her marcelle and smiled
superior--she has always prided herself on being sort of high-brow and
reads _Sappy Stories_ regular.

"Why, dearie, how you talk!" she says. "Dont you know that a little
gaiety keeps up the morale of the country?"

"I'm not so sure about some gaiety keeping up the moral of anything!" I
says with meaning, not wishing to directly knock anybody but still
wishing Masie to get me. "And personally myself, I think any time's a
bad time to waste money on clothes which won't last!"

"My goodness, Sweetie!" Masie shrieked. "What's gonner become of us if
ladies was to quit buying? Tell me that? How we gonner hire our help,
and all, and how can they live if we dont hire 'em? Have a heart!" she
says. "And what are you talking about--you coming in after a new dress
yourself, and only last week had two chiffons which Gawd knows ain't
chain-armour for wear!"

"I know!" I admitted, "but I'm going to can my order. Just tell the girl
to bring gingham or something which will wash--if you got such a thing!"

"Well, Mary Gilligan, I guess you're going nutty!" says Masie, but she
gives the order, and I choose one at $15--which could be dry-cleaned,
and that was the nearest I could come to what I was after.

"You wont like it!" Masie warned me. "It's too cheap--better take a good
silk!"

But I wouldn't--not on a bet. Even although what Masie said about
cutting down too much on buying stuff sounded sensible, or would if only
the question was how far can a person cut before they reach the quick?
Of course I see her point, and she had as good a right to live as me.
Yet something was wrong some place, I couldn't figure out where. So I
just charged the dress and set out for home, and owning a cotton dress
made me feel awful warlike and humble--do you get me?

But while I felt better about my dress, the cream-cakes was still with
me, and, being now a sort of Government Official, they and that got me
noticing the food signs, as well, and wishing I had eat only a little
cereal for my lunch. That gave me a idea which on arriving home I handed
to Ma.

"I have just bought me a wash-dress, or almost so, Ma!" I told her. "And
honest to Gawd I do think we ought to eat to match it. Suppose we was
to go on war-rations of our own free wills?"

"Well, we eat pretty plain and wholesome now!" says Ma. "Just like we
always done!"

"But times is different!" I says, toying with the soda-mint bottle, and
who knows but what they were being more needed abroad? "And cream-cakes
is a non-essential. Especially to one which has to keep her figure
down," I says. "So for lunch to-morrow let's have cereal only," I says.

Well I hate to take pleasure from any one and the sight of Ma's face
when I said this would of brought tears to a glass eye. But I felt
particularly strong-minded just then what with the indigestion and no
letter from the censor yet and Gawd knows that is no joke as they are
certainly more his than Jim's by the time they get to me! But after I
had told Ma how all the caviar had ought to be sent over to the boys and
how food would win the war and how Wilson expected every man--you
know--well, she got all enthusiastic over making up a lot of cheap
recipes and we had the butcher and grocer pared down to about ninety
cents each per day. Ma could just see herself growing slim, and she kept
remembering things she used to cook for Pa in the old days before she
retired on the insurance money. And first thing you knew the time had
come for me to go to the theatre. Just as I was starting for the door Ma
mentioned Rosco, our publicity man.

"Are you going to call him or will I?" she wanted to know.

"About what?" I asked.

"Why about your committee-meeting to-morrow?" she says.

"Nothing doing!" I came back at her. "Would you invite a manager to see
a practice-act? Its going to be amateur-night for me, to-morrow is, and
no outsiders are urged to attend! And anyways, I'm not doing this for
publicity which Gawd knows I dont need any, but for my Uncle Sam!"

"Well, thank goodness, you aint go no other relations you feel that way
about," says Ma, "or we'd all be in the poorhouse shortly!"


III

Well, that night when I came home I cried myself to sleep with my head
under the pillow so's Ma wouldn't hear what I called the censor, but
slept good on account of the simple little war-supper of only lettuce
and a cup of soup which Ma had ready for me, and in the morning was up
with the lark as the poet says, only of course they was really sparrows,
it being the city. Well, anyways, I felt good and husky and as early as
eleven-thirty I was all fixed up in the new wash dress, which its a
actual fact Musette had to sew it together four separate places that it
come apart while putting it on me. The goods wasn't the quality I had
thought, come to look at them closer, but anyways it was cheap and that
was one good thing about it. Ma brought me in a shredded wheat-less
biscuit and a cup of coffee, a sort of funny look on her face like she
had taken her oath and would stick it out to the death. She didn't say
anything, only set it down and I ate it, saying nothing either because
it was what we had agreed we would get along on for breakfast. When I
was through she give me a news item.

"The cook is leaving!" she says. "On account of the new rations."

"That's no loss!" I says gaily, because as a general thing Ma is only
too glad when this happens.

"I ain't so sure!" says Ma. "I'm not as young as I was, and I cant do
_all_ the cooking!"

Well--believe you me--I sat up and took notice of that! Ma kicking at
her favorite pastime. Something was wrong. But even then I didn't get
what it was. So I just remarked we could eat our dinners at the Ritz
that being good publicity anyways and always expected of me in full
evening dress when I am dancing. So that much settled and there being no
letter yet and me being sort of nervous about that meeting which was
breaking ahead, I went and beguiled a hour at Jim's souvenir. I thought
a whole lot of that pianola, he having given it to me just before he
sailed, and as of course it was too heavy to wear over my aching heart
which is generally supposed to be done with souvenirs of loved ones
overseas, I put in a good deal of time sitting at it, and--believe you
me--my touch is a whole lot better than Ma's which me being light on my
feet by nature and business both, is not so surprising. Well, I got
myself all worked up over Jim while playing "Somewhere A Voice Is
Calling with Mandolin Arrangement" and a whole lot of expression and
what with feeling a little low on account of the patriotic breakfast, I
was just in the right frame of mind to throw myself heart and soul into
the good work before me--do you get it? You do!


Well, I had no sooner left the shelter of our own flat, than that same
hold-up game which I had noticed so particular the day before was
started on me. The elevator-girls, which had taken the place of a
standing yet sitting army of foreign princes which had used to clutter
up our front hall and the only excuse they had for living was the nerve
they give the landlord when he come to price the rents:--well, anyways,
the girls which had taken their places since the draft blew in, was
selling W.S.S. Of course I couldn't buy any for the same reasons as
yesterday. So they sprung a working girls War Crippled Aid Fund and I
contributed to that, because I believe in girls running elevators. Why
wouldn't they, when thousands has run dumb-waiters so good for years?
Well, anyways, I give them something and escaped to the street only to
be lit on for stamps by the first small boy I met. And after only seven
others had tried me, I got to the Palatial Hotel, and--believe you
me--by that time worried pretty severely about how could a person sell
twenty-five thousand dollars worth of the pesky things and not get slain
by some impatient citizen who felt that I was the last camel and his
back was broke, or whatever the poet says? Really, it was serious, and
being the first of the Theatrical Ladies to arrive, the big ballroom
with the table and seven empty chairs like a desert island in the middle
of the floor, failed to cheer me any.

Well, there was a arm-chair at one end of the table and there being
nobody around to either elect me or stop me, I grabbed off this chair
and held to it with the grim expression of a suburbanite who knows her
husband isn't coming but wont admit it, and a good thing I acted prompt
as should be done in all war-measures, because pretty soon the other
ladies commenced arriving. I guess they must of thought they could get a
better part by coming early, they was so prompt, and by one o'clock they
was actually all there except Pattie and her unknown friend, which was
pretty good, the date having been twelve-thirty.

Well, we all shook hands and I arose from my seat but didn't move a inch
away from it, having seen something of committee meetings where the
wrong person had it. And then they all sat down and took in my dress and
hat and I theirs, and we was very amiable and refined and I felt so glad
I had picked such a good bunch and wished Pattie would hurry so's we
could commence, when lo! as the poet says, my wish was granted, for in
come Pattie and with her her friend and My Gawd, if it wasn't Ruby
Roselle!

Well, far be it from me to say anything about any lady, only pro-Germans
is pro-Germans by any other name, as Shakespeare says, provided you can
find it out, and here she was, butting in on a gathering of would-be
Dolly Madisons and Moll Pritchers and everything, and I wouldn't of
invited her for the world if only Pattie had mentioned her name. But
here she was, all dressed up like a plush horse and so friendly it got
me worried right away. Any one which has seen Ruby in her red, white and
blue tights will at once realize what I mean, though nothing but the
tights was ever proved against her. What on earth she wanted with our
committee was very suspicious because why would she ever of taken a
expensive and difficult present like a baby alligator from a German
which she once done, if not pro, her own self?

But time for starting something had sure come, if we was ever to get any
lunch, so I got them all seated and commenced--a little weak in the
knees which it was a good thing I was seated, but strong in the voice,
so as to start the moral right--do you get me?

"Ladies of the Theatrical Ladies W.S.S. Committee," I began, being
determined not to waste no time on formalities, which it has always
seemed to me that on such occasions a lot of gas is used up in them
which would have run the machine quite a ways if applied properly. We
all knew we was the Theatrical Ladies W.S.S. Committee and I was the
chairman, so why waste words making me it? "Ladies," I says, "I have a
letter from President Wilson asking me to get to work, and so have
formed a committee to sell twenty-five thousand dollars worth of War
Savings Stamps on the first of the month. I sat right down and wrote him
I would do it, and here we are. Of course this being the twenty-eighth
of the month the notice is short. Probably he didn't expect us really to
get to work until next month, but personally, myself, I think we should
surprise him by getting the money by Saturday night, which Saturday
night is the first. Now, you Committee Ladies is here to discuss how
will we do it. I would be glad to hear ideas, suggestions and etc."

Well, nobody said anything for a few minutes only Ruby put a little
powder on her nose and looked at it critical in her vanity case mirror,
which well she might for Gawd knows she had powder enough on her
already. Then Madame Broun, the Lady Baritone, cleared her throat.

"I would be glad to give a recital," she said, swelling up her neatly
upholstered black satin bosom, "and turn over the money it brings in. I
presume the Government would hire the theatre for me."

"Well," I says, "that is a real nice suggestion only not quite
practical. You see it wouldn't be right to ask the Government to pay for
the theater in case it was a wet Monday and only a few came in out of
the rain. Any more ideas?"

The blond Dahlia sister spoke up then.

"Whatever you suggest goes with me, Marie," she says, which was terrible
sweet of her, only it's a darn sight easier to give a proxy than a good
suggestion, which I did not however mention, Blondie being a real fine
Jewish American and a willing worker as I well knew.

"I thought of course it was a benefit we would give," put in Pattie in a
voice which just plain dismissed every other possibility. "I have a new
patter to 'Yankee Doodle' with a red, white and blue spot on me, at
front center with the rest of the house dark. It ought to go big about
the center of the programme."

After which modest little suggestion she sunk gracefully back into her
seat and commenced shadow-tapping the tune with her feet under the
committee table.

"Well, benefits is always possible," I said, "and of course we could
have it with admission by W.S.S. only. But it's been done a lot and
three days ain't so very much time in which to get it up in a way which
would do your act justice," I says.

"Ah! _cheries!_" says Mlle. DuChamp. "Mes petites!" she says, whatever
that was. "I have zee gran' idea--perfect! I will make zee speach on zee
steps of zee Library of zee Public at Forty-Second Street and Feeth
Avenoo. I will arise, I will stretch my han', I will call out
'Cityonnes! 'Urry up queek! Your countree call you--Formez vos
battillions!' and while I make zee dramatic appeal zee ozzers can
collect twenty-five t'ousand dollar from zee breathless crowd!"

She had got up on her box-toed shoes and was making the grandest
gestures you ever see. Honest to Gawd I do believe that girl has herself
kidded into believing that the Paris she was born in was France, not
Ind. I kind of waved at her, and when she had flopped back into her
place, completely overcome by her emotions, I suggested that maybe the
Library wasn't as Public as it looked, being generally occupied of a
fine afternoon by wounded soldiers making the same line of talk, and of
course Mlle. DuChamps would be more _chic_ and all that, but would she
be let?

"Of course she wouldn't!" says Ruby, coming out of her vanity-case for a
minute. "Of course not! My idea is that we all chip in say about seven
thousand five hundred and let it go at that!"

Somehow this cheap-Jack way of getting out of doing any work by spending
a little money, got my goat something fierce. Besides which it was
Ruby's idea of patriotism and all against W.S.S. rules and everything,
but for the minute I was so floored I couldn't speak. The dark Dahlia
did it for me, though, and much more contained than I could of at the
time.

"That's mighty generous, Miss Roselle," she says just as sweet, "only
you see me and Blondie has each got our thousand dollars worth and one
person can't get more," she says.

"Well, I'll take a thousand dollars worth then," said Ruby, and I could
see very plain that the matter was finished in her mind, and what would
you expect different after them patriotic tights of hers?

"I'll take a thousand also," put in Madame Broun. "To tell the right
truth I haven't a one. What do you do with them--stick them on the backs
of letters like Tuberculosis, or Merry Xmas?"

Well, we explained they was not a additional burden to the postman but
more or less of a investment. And then the awful truth come out that
Pattie hadn't none either and that Mlle. DuChamps had always thought
they was to put on tobacco boxes and candy and everything you stored up
in the house to eat, though Gawd only knows how she got that idea except
of course it's the truth that most people is boobs, outside of their
own line, more's the pity!


Well, anyways, we took in four thousand right then and there and so all
that remained was twenty-one. Ruby undertook to sell another three among
her personal friends, and the Dahlias said they thought they could raise
as much more between theirselves. Then when Mlle. DuChamps and Madame
Broun had concluded to take on three apiece there was eleven thousand
dollars worth of friendless little stamps with nobody to love them but
me. Well, with no better schemes than benefits and concerts and talks in
sight, I see it was up to me to bite off the biggest slice of pie
myself, so I said I'd take the remainder. Of course with my influence
and name and all I would of had no trouble getting rid of them only by
asking prominent men like Goldringer and Rosco and the Dancing Trust
people beside a few more personal ones. And then when we had got this
far I see some of the ladies commence looking at their wrist-watches for
other reasons than to show they had them, and so hustled up the last of
the business which was merely how would we print our forms for
subscribers to fill out. Ruby suggested a gilt-edge card tinted violet
with whatever lettering I chose, and while I didn't care for it I
agreed, being hungry myself.

"I do think it is awful fine of you to take on that big amount," said
Pattie. "But you always was generous, Marie, I will say that for you."

"Ladies!" I said. "No thanks where they dont belong. Because I am
undertaking this sale for far other reasons than you suppose."

But since everybody by then plainly cared more for their lunch than my
reasons we parted, agreeing to send the money to my place on Sunday
morning.


IV

But I will here set down my unspoken reasons, which was that fine as it
is to walk out to your rich friends and pluck a thousand worth of stamps
per each off them and of course nobody but thinks the rich should have
them, too, I had a strong hunch that the reason for selling stamps at
five dollars or even two bits, was because every one could get in on a
good thing that way. Somehow there seemed something too up-stage about
going in only for the high spots, and after ordering the cards I hurried
home full of determination to make a stab at selling to the common herd
and with a terrible appetite and anxious as could be over the one
o'clock mail.

Well, the last two was doomed to a immediate disappointment because the
censor was sitting just as tight as ever and there was only cereal for
lunch. Believe you me it give me sort of a jolt when I sat down to so
little and Ma's face was not any too cheering. We commenced to eat in
silence which being both perfect ladies was the only thing to do as it
was also burned. But after a minute Ma lay down on the job. She pushed
her dish over toward me in disgust.

"Try that on your piano, Mary Gilligan!" she says.

"Well, Ma, you know what war is," I says. "And we'll get a good meal at
the Ritz to-night to make up!"

Well, anyways, sustained more by patriotism than by what I had eat, I
set out to put over a scheme I had all hatched out in my head for using
places which was already kind of organized, as my selling agents--do you
get me? And the first place I went was to Maison Rosabelle's
because--believe you me--that cheap dress I had bought off her needed a
plastic surgeon by then. Maison was as usual giving a unconscious
imitation of a trained seal, switching gracefully around the store with
a customer which she was hypnotizing into all forgetfulness of prices.
But finally I got her alone long enough to express what I thought about
the dress and any lady will be able to imagine what that was. Then I
asked her could she fall in with my scheme which was on Saturday to take
only Thrift Stamps or W.S.S. for each purchase and sell them the stamps
herself. Maison didn't enthuse over the idea, though she's rich at that.

"Why, dearie! Not on a bet!" she said. "It ain't that I'm not patriotic,
but this establishment is _exclusive!"_

Well, I seen there was no use arguing with her, and I guess there never
is with a woman which is marcelle-waved every day of her life, not to
mention that cheap fake of a dress. Next one I buy of her without a
guarantee will be for her funeral! So I just left her flat and went over
to Chamberlin's. Of course it takes a whole lot more brains to run a
enormous cabaret and restaurant like his than Maison has to use if less
nerve, he not coming personally into contact with the customers like she
does, and I counted on this. I went in by the main door where a lady sat
selling W.S.S. and she bored me to death with them while a captain went
to find Chamberlin. When I seen him coming I tried to assume that
sprightly and convincing manner of the sidewalk W.S.S. hounds, but was
overcome with that deep seated sense of being about to make a flivver,
which also shows on most of them. However, Chamberlin was a genial good
soul and was crazy over stamps. But he had beat me to it on the
admission only by buying stamps on Saturday night.

"Better try among your rich friends, Miss La Tour!" he says. "And you'll
be surprised how many you'll sell. That's the easiest way unless you use
a gun!"

"I don't want to sell to my friends," says I. "I want to sell to
everybody--get folks to chip in. The chipping-in idea is what is so
good--get together and all that."

Well, believe you me--after this I tried a dozen places and every one of
them, stores and all, where I had any influence or charge account, had
got theirselves so full of W.S.S. schemes that I felt like a helpless
babe in arms as the poet says, before I was through. There was no room
for my little $11,000 worth any place: they had all stocked up, and what
to do next I had no idea.

On the way to the Ritz that night Ma didn't talk steady like she usually
does and seemed kind of low in her mind, and maybe in her stomach also
which I was the same by then. Not to mention the censor which it is
better not to for fear I might say what I thought and he a Government
official.

But anyways no sooner was we inside the hotel than two society swells
tackled us for W.S.S. Oh, they was democratic, just! They spoke right to
us, and everything! But my goat was got by it.

"A regular hold-up!" I whispered to Ma. And as I spoke them fateful
words I remembered that I owned a gun, which it was left from a piece I
done for the movies and I had kept it for a souvenir. Of course I
dismissed the thought at once like the sensible woman I am. But somehow
it wouldn't exactly stay away.

Did you ever get to seeing things as they really was and wondering why
on earth people go through such a lot of motions pretending things is
not what they seem, as some guy so truly says--do you get me? As soon as
I had said "hold-up" I realized that that was just what was being done.
And when I realized that it was _necessary_ to hold up people in order
to get them to make a safe investment which would earn them a good net
profit while saving their fool lives, I got so raving mad that a gun
seemed too good for them. And mad at myself, too, for not seeing sooner
how much my own Jim's welfare was hanging onto my shoulders. Somehow up
to then I had really a idea that the bunch down in Washington was
relieving me of all trouble and responsibility about this war. But now I
seen it wasn't so. If the G.A.P. or Great American People was actually
such boobs that they didn't flock up and wish their life savings onto
such a scheme, they had ought to be made to, same as Ma used to hold my
nose for my own good and believe you me--I can taste that oil to this
day!

Well, anyways, this philosophy stuff kept going through my mind while
running up a considerable check which Gawd knows we needed it or the
undertaker would of conscripted us. And then all of a sudden who did I
see but Ruby Roselle only two tables away and with her a husky young
lounge-lizzard which goes around with her a lot--you know--one of the
kind whose favorite flower is the wild oat, but never has anything to
spend but the evening. And him and Ruby had their heads together and was
watching me like the German spies in a movie which every one in the
audience spots except their victims which of course are looking at the
director close up front which is certainly the only reason they are
fooled.

Well, anyways, I was surprised to see Ruby because Broadway places is
more her speed, and I never see her in such refined surroundings before.
But I realizing about her kind of patriotism I commenced wondering
wasn't she there to watch me? Though for what reason I had no idea.

That night after the show, I asked Goldringer wouldn't he use the
admission by W.S.S. Saturday, and he wouldn't because he had it on for
one of his other theatres. And so I went home in despair and a taxi, and
was further cheered by a empty letter-box.

In the morning the cards come--a thousand of them--and certainly more
elegant looking than I had expected, I will say that for Ruby and
reading as follows:

"The Theatrical Ladies W.S.S. Committee will deliver to ............ of
............ worth of W.S.S. stamps on presentation of this card.
Payment for same is hereby acknowledged."

Then came a blank which it was up to me to fill in. Well, I didn't
hesitate and after a hearty breakfast of crackers and milk and weak tea,
I tied up the lace sleeves of my negligee and set to work at signing
them. Believe you me, before I was done I quite see why President Wilson
used a rubber stamp! But I didn't weaken until noon, when any one would
have on the meal I'd had. And by then they was finished anyways and
every one of them valid and as good as my cheque. Then just as I was
feeling proud of myself in come Ma and I could see at once she was going
to take a fall out of me in her sweet womanly way.

"If you ain't too busy with your war work," says Ma very gentle but
firm, "I'd like to talk to you about something before we set down to
the skeleton lunch which is waiting and can be continued in our next for
all I care!" she says.

Well, I got that gone-around-the-middle feeling which I always get when
Ma gives me a certain look, just like I used to when she'd tell me soap
was good for washing out the mouths of kids which had told a lie. And so
I just set there and listened.

"Now, Mary Gilligan," she commenced. "Do you know the size of the cheque
you signed over to the hotel last night?"

"About twelve-fifty," I says sort of getting a glimmer.

"When your Pa and me was married he give me twelve a week for all our
meals!" she says, and set back and folded her hands in a way which said
all she hadn't.

"But times has changed," I says sort of feeble.

"But appetites has not!" says Ma. "And how can you keep in good training
on this war-nonsense?" she wanted to know. "Not to mention me, which it
might improve my figure but never my disposition?"

"But how about making war sacrifices and all, Ma?" I says. "Jim ain't
eating like we done up till yesterday!"

"Nor he ain't eating twelve dollar dinners at the Ritz, neither," she
reminds me, at which of course I shut up and she went on. "Now I dont
believe being stingy to ourselves is really gonner help the war. You
have strode in upon my department for once, Mary Gilligan, and I'm going
to put you out! You don't know where to economize and I do. No more
eating out, and a good sensible table at home, minus cream cakes," she
says, "is what we do from now on!"

And with that she marches out leaving me flat as one of her own
pan-cakes. Well, this was bad enough, but when Musette got after me as I
was dressing to go for my five miles, I seen that my humbling for the
day was not finished.

"That dress Madam bought yesterday," she began.

"You can have it!" I said, beating her to it, or so I thought.

"Thank you, I do not care for it," says Musette. "I was just remarking
it is really not fit to wear again. Madam would of done better to pay a
little more!"

Can you beat it? You can not! Two falls from one pride! Believe you me I
took _some_ walk that afternoon, and if I had wore a speedomiter I bet
it would have registered a lot over five miles. And while I was walking
I kept getting madder and madder and more and more worked up over what
boneheads people was and how was a person to economize nowadays and how
on earth would I sell all them stamps by Saturday night with a matinée
in between and keep my promise to President Wilson? It begun to look
like I was going to have to become one of them sidewalk pests. I got a
real good picture of myself going up to the proud or pesky passer-by,
and getting turned down so often that my spirit was bent thinking of it.

But--believe you me--I made up my mind that if I had to hold up anybody
to make them invest in the World's Soundest Securities or W.S.S. I would
hold them up good and plenty and no disguise about it. I thought again
about my revolver, the one which I had used it in the movies when I done
"The Dancer's Downfall" for them and kept it for a souvenir. I was that
wrought up over the situation that by the time I got home I had pretty
near decided I'd take that fire-arm to the theatre and lock the doors
and come down front center and shoot out one of the lights to show I
meant it and then take the money right off the audience. The theatre
being my native element it seemed only natural to pull the trick there,
only being a lady the gun really did look a little rough only not more
so than the public deserved.


V

WELL, anyways, I was certainly up against it with all them blanks still
on my hands and no way in sight of getting rid of them. And just to make
things nice and pleasant, what do I see when I come on the stage that
night but Ruby Roselle and her pet lounge-lizzard which were sitting in
a box. She certainly seems to go in for reptiles for pets. And no sooner
did I get off after my eighth curtain call, than around she comes to my
dressing room and hands me a check for her stamps and for the ones she
had undertaken to sell and already had.

"I suppose yours is all sold too!" says Ruby. "You are so efficient,
dearie!"

"Oh, mine are all right!" I snapped. "Or will be by this time
to-morrow."

"Why, ain't they gone?" she cooed. And did I wish for my gun? I did!
"Ain't you give any of them cards out yet?" she says.

"No!" I says. "But I will--I'll commence with you, dear Miss Roselle," I
says. "And here you are"--and I filled out the receipt cards which I had
a few in my vanity case for emergencies, and give them to her. When she
took them I noticed she had a awful funny look in her eye, but at the
time it meant nothing to me. Alas! Would I had heeded it more--but
no--solid ivory! Solid ivory! I passed it up completely. And Ruby
grabbed the cards, collected her new pet animal, and went away.

Well, my state of mind that night was distinctly poor, even after the
nice little well-ballanced war-ration of hot chocolate and corn bread
with brown sugar which Ma had for me and delicious as anything you ever
ate if she did get the recipe out of a newspaper and they so unreliable
nowadays. But no letter from Jim, and so after I had asked Ma if she
thought it was right to wear black, I went to bed and fell into a
exhausted sleep which lasted well on toward the box-office man's
afternoon on, because Ma always lets me sleep late when I have to dance
twice.

Well, anyways, I was so rushed getting to the theatre for the matinée
that I hadn't no time to try any of that sidewalk stuff, only I did get
a cheque from each of the other committee members and told Ma to send
them receipt cards. And did I feel cheap? I _did!_ A flivver, that was
what I had made. But so long as Jim was surely dead by now, I didn't
care for myself. Only my promise to Mr. Wilson made a lump in my throat
while doing my three hand-springs and the "Valse Superb," which shows
how bad I felt. And what do you know, when I took my encore, there was
Ruby Roselle again, down in front and all alone.

This got about the last butt out of my goat and I sent an usher to get
her, but Ruby had went before the usher had made up her mind to
undertake the mission. I was just about wild all the way home, and the
sight of Ma's face when I got there almost made me cry it was that sweet
and friendly. Honest to Gawd when Ma has got her own way about anything
she is just lovely to be with! And having got the kitchen back and the
grandest dish of baked beans all full of molasses and salt pork for
dinner, she was feeling fine and I was the same under her influence and
even let her play "Sing Me to Sleep" with the loud pedal on Jim's
souvenir afterwards and never said a word to her about it, though
suffering while I listened. And then it was time to go back to the
theatre and I took Musette and that whole box of gilt edged securities
which seemed no good to nobody, but I took them, and a good yet bad
thing I did, for on the way downtown I decided what to do, and when I
got there, called the ushers and gave them instructions and a little
something else by way of promoting kindly feelings. And then with
beating heart I beat it for the dressing room and commenced rubbing on
my make-up cream with trembling fingers.


Did you ever make one of them critical decisions which you knew in your
heart you was actually going to carry it through and no camouflage, even
if it killed you and it very likely to? Well, when I decided to make a
speech right out in public I got that feeling--do you get me? And any
Elk or other lodge member which attends annual banquets will know what I
mean. Honest to Gawd I nearly missed my cue, and after I finally got on
the stage the dance I did must of been either automatic or a
inspiration and I don't know why they liked it out in front, but they
did. All I personally myself could hear was "Ladies and Gentleman, I
want to speak a word to you,"--You know! And hand-springs in between!
Well of course when I come out for my first encore I didn't have the
wind to say nothing--But my eyes was as good as ever and there in a box
was Ruby Roselle again!

Believe you me--that was a jolt and a half! Here she had come to give me
the laugh I had no doubt, and somehow after the second call my wind was
all of a sudden back good and strong, and with it came my courage. For I
wouldn't of been downed by her, not for anything!

So stepping foreward in a modest manner I held up my hand and the house
got quiet and listened. As I have said, the show was at the Spring
Garden, and it's awful big and I had never knew how full of silence it
could be until I heard the sound of my own voice all alone in it. But
after a minute I got used to it, and so interested in trying to convince
the folks, that I didn't care.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," I says. "This is going to be a plain, good
old-fashioned hold-up! If you listen hard, maybe you'll hear the screams
of the women and children, and the groans of the wounded pocket-books!
Far be it from me to do anything so unrefined as to actually use a gun
on you," I says, "but I'm going to do the next thing to it. I'm going to
sell eleven thousand dollars worth of W.S.S. right here and now, and you
are going to buy them. I know all of you has probably been buying them
all day and is sick of them, but I have personally promised President
Wilson to do as much by to-night without fail and you must help me make
good. And no matter how many you have bought," I says, "unless you have
a thousand dollars worth you can spend another ten or so apiece. Now, as
I say, I know this is a hold-up, because it is meant to be. And any
public which can sit here in a theatre and feel anoyed at having to buy
a few stamps when a million of our boys is over in far-away, sort of
unreal France, giving their lives, had ought to have a machine gun
turned on them from this stage instead of a line of talk! Probably this
is the first time in the history of finances that it has been necessary
to jolly a crowd into making a good investment. If I was selling stock
in a fake gold mine," I says, "you would probably be climbing on the
stage to get it! Now will everybody willing to take ten dollars worth
kindly stand up?"

There was a few laughs, and a few people got up here and there, sort of
shamefaced.

"Come on!" I says. "Come on--are you all cripples? You over there--only
ten dollars--save it on next months grocery bill--all right--save it on
your auto bill!"

A few more got up then, but not nearly enough and I caught sight of
Goldringer in the wings by then and not having warned him what I was
going to do, I could tell by his expression that I mustn't hold the
stage too long or a militaristic system would right away be born in our
theatre. So I got desperate.

"No more!" I called. "Oh, come on get up! Will I send for crutches, or
are you only shy? Remember, I got that money promised! Only ten dollars
each!"

But no more stirred. For a minute I thought my flivver was complete, and
then I got a idea. I went over and beckoned to George, the orchestra
leader, and shaking all over at my own nerve, I whispered to him.
George grinned and passed along the whisper to his crew, and in another
minute that audience was standing, every last one of them, and--believe
you me--the Star Spangled Banner had never sounded so good to me before!

Well, anyways, my pep all come back and I jumped off the stage as I see
the ushers couldn't possibly handle the orders alone, and wait or no
wait, the way that audience took my hold-up was something grand, it was
that good natured, although of course a Broadway crowd gets sort of
hardened to having their money taken away from them roughly. They was
lambs, and took cards so fast I couldn't have shuffled them good if it
had been a game.

Well, anyways, when I finally got back to my dressing-room and the
trained animals had come on at last--believe you me--I was all in, but
not a card left, and not alone eleven thousand dollars but
thirteen-fifty in actual cash! I didn't worry none about having too much
as I never see a committee yet which couldn't use more money than it had
ast for, the White Kittens always having a deficit. And then I just put
the boodle away safe in my tin make-up box which I had emptied because
it locked good, and took me and Musette and it home to Ma.

Well, that was about all for that, and I had a fine sleep that night
after sending the President a wire telling him I had the money all
right. And if only the censor had loosened up, I would have been
perfectly happy, with all that cash in my little Burglar's Delight over
the mantle-piece and a good real energy-making breakfast coming to me in
the morning.


But alas for false security, as the poet says. No sooner had Ma and me
ate breakfast next morning than in came Musette and says there are two
gentlemen outside wants to see me. Well, it seems they wouldn't give
their names so I says show them in for on account of Ma always making us
dress in real clothes for breakfast Sundays, it was alright.

Well, in come two gentlemen then, and it was easy to see one was a cop.
Why he didn't have green whiskers or something I dont know because the
one citizen you can always spot is a cop, and that tweed suit was no
disguise, although he seemed to think so. I got a awful funny feeling in
my stomach at this sight although there was nothing on my mind but my
hair pins. The other was a gentleman and no disguise about him, and I
sort of took to him right away and dropped my society-comedy manner
which is such a good weapon of defense against strangers because I knew
right away he would see through it on account of him being the real
thing.

"Miss LaTour?" he says politely.

"Yes," I says, "what can I do for you?"

"Alias Mary Gilligan?" says the cop, which was right in character and
hadn't ought to of got Ma's goat like it done.

"Alias nothing!" says Ma. "Gilligan is her right name and you can see my
marriage certificate and the date is on it plain!"

"Better leave this to me for a moment, O'Rourke," says the nice
gentleman, about Pa's age, he must have been. Then he turns to me while
the cop took a back seat.

"Miss LaTour," the gent. began, "I am one of the local W.S.S.
committee--Pioneer Division--Pierson Langton is my name. And I have come
to see you concerning your sale last night!"

Well--believe you me--the minute I heard his name I had him spotted! One
of the F. F. V's of N.Y. and I had often seen his name in the paper
with war-work and all.

"Do sit down, both!" I says real cordial. "I am so glad to see you! It's
kind of you to come, because of course I was going to bring you the
money the first thing in the morning! Just wait till I get my make-up
box!"

And without giving him time to say another word I hurried out and got
it, the cop watching me with his hand on his hip. When I come back and
give Mr. Langton the box and key, he looked real surprised.

"Twenty-five thousand cash!" I says. "Would you mind counting it?" He
give me one of the funniest looks I ever had handed out, but he done
like I asked. Then he got up, box under one arm, and bowed, and sat down
again.

"Miss LaTour," he said. "I think I win a bet with our friend O'Rourke,
here! I was sure you were all right. Your reputation was on the face of
it too valuable for such an open fraud. And your utter disingenuousness
is the final proof!"

"Fraud! What do you mean?" I gasped.

"There's been a complaint about your selling W.S.S. without no
authority!" says O'Rourke at this. "Entered last night by Miss Ruby
Roselle. We got your cards here, that she handed in. But you ain't got
no stamps! I dont know but what we ought to make a arrest, Mr. Langton!"

"I will be obliged to you if you will let the matter drop for the
moment," says Mr. Langton. "This young lady acted in good faith, I am
convinced. And now, Miss LaTour, perhaps you will tell us how this all
came about?"

Well, did I tell him? I did! I never told anything readier. And then I
took out the President's letter which I had it on me, and told how I had
writ to him at once, partially because I couldn't read the other fellows
name.

"I accept the reproof," said Mr. Langton. "I will get a rubber-stamp
to-morrow!"

Then his eyes twinkled at me in the nicest way, and I twinkled back, and
after that I knew the cop hadn't a chance of running me in, which was a
big relief, for my hands felt like a couple of clams, about then, I was
so scared.

"So you ain't mad?" I says to Mr. Langton.

"Not a bit!" he says. "I think it can all be straightened out. But of
course you understand that what you did was a trifle--er--irregular. If
you will come down to headquarters to-morrow and meet the members of
our board, we will be glad to assist you in forming a more regular
organization."

And I said I would, and then we all said good-by real friendly, even the
cop. And I felt awful sort of excited and scared and glad that Ruby had
pulled that stuff, for if she hadn't I might actually of gone to jail, I
could see that plain enough now! And so, to let off a little steam when
they had all gone I sat down to my souvenir and started off "Over There
in Four Handed Arrangement." Then just as I had got it going good, Ma,
who was reading the Sunday paper, gave a holler. I turned around quick,
and there her eyes was popping out of her head and glued to the front
page.

"Jim!" she shrieked. "My Gawd!"

Well, how I reached that paper I don't know, but somehow I did and there
it was right in the middle column.

     "American Dancer Now An Ace. James La Tour Brings Down Three Enemy
     Planes In One Afternoon."

Oh, my heavens! Didn't I yell, just! And me knocking the newspapers and
the censor. And all the time Jim had been merely too busy to write!




III

HOLY SMOKES


I

                                                Palatial Apartments,
                                               0256 Riverside Drive,
                                                      New York City,
                                                   U. S. A. America.
  (Kindly forward if on tower)
   Passed by censor.

DEAR MARY:

Well say little one, I am certainly glad your health, new contracts and
the two fool dogs is both doing so nicely and as for the cigarettes they
were O.K. not to say swell. Only dearie, it ain't hardly necessary to
have my monogram on the next lot for Fritz has never waited for me to
catch up to him so's I could offer him one and he's about the only
person would be impressed by the J. La T. because our own boys kid me
about any little thing like that on account of their knowing me to be
your dancing-partner and not to mention husband and they are still slow
to realize that it takes a real he-man to swing you around my neck
twenty times like we do in the Tango de Lux, and I have to continually
keep showing them.

Then another good reason for no gold monogram is that the price of same
would cover quite a bunch of cheap smokes and dearie handing them about
is more to me than my own personal vanity and would be the same with my
shirts if necessary, while over here in distant Belgium I realise it was
also a waste to have them embroidered on the sleeve because the dam
chinaman always used to mark them up with monograms of his own anyways.

Speaking of money we used to spend on un-essentials before the war, I
tell you dearie we certainly learn in the army, especially since getting
into this recaptured territory, that many objects we would have swore
could not be done without is laid off like the extra people after the
ball-room scene and nobody misses them until somebody sends over one of
them--like them monogramed smokes of yours. Immediately I got them I
commenced to think about little old B'way and dry-martinis and my
little old roadster with the purple body and the red wheels, and us
dancing at the palatial with the juice full on us, red and green, violet
and amber. Oh Kid! it made me home-sick!! But then we got a order to
start on cleaning up after them Botches again and so I forgot everything
but you and my new step--which was forward, double line!

Well, sweetie, now about this smokes question. Of course your Ma having
been with the circus is used to giving up things, as naturally in a
trapese-act such as hers used to be she would need all the nerve she had
and even eating a welsh rabbit would of been a wild party to her. The
center ring is no joke and forty feet above it on a trapese from the
center canvas less so. But trapese work has not yet been offered to the
Allies except mebbe Itily on them mountains and any lady which starts a
society to keep smokes from soldiers may be strong in morals but is
surely weak in the head, which I never knew your Ma to be before. She
being always not only a lady but a great little picker on contracts and
what would we of done without her that time Goldringer tried to slip the
"satisfactory to the Goldringer Theatrical Productions Corp." stuff
over on us and she spotted it?

But for the love of liberty can this idea of hers about it not being
good for the boys to smoke and make her quit worrying about us tearing
around France learning no new sins. For sweetie the crimes a man can
committ on whats left of his pay after the alotment is took out and the
insurance and the liberty bonds instalments would be sanctioned by
anybody in the country even if his coller buttoned up the back. For take
it or leave it, liquor, ladies and lyrics is as expensive here as north
of 42nd str., and our pay dont go for them even after distracting the
above.

Why me and a fellow went off on leave to a general store in a town which
I couldn't spell for you much less mention it, even if permitted. But
anyways we went to it and Mac bought some winterweights and they was
four-fifty a pair and no better than the U.S. seventy-five cent kind,
and I got two pair socks a dollar per each and two bananas for 25c,
which only goes to show everything here is terrible expensive except
nessessaties. So dont let your Ma worry over me spending my remaining
nickel on vice.

I note what you say about the way folks at home get your goat by passing
the buck on war-reliefs--if it's chocolet they say they've just given to
tobacco, if it's tobacco they just bought a W.S.S., and if it's W.S.S.
they just got a hatful of bonds, or if it's bonds they just give their
last cent to chocolet--passing the buck all along the line. Well dearie,
I guess mebbe that's their way of getting a little war-relief of their
own, but as you say why would they need any relief when the fact that
they are for the most part without cooties ought to be relief enough in
itself? Let alone having to dodge only taxi cabs and bill-collectors
instead of shells. Only of course we dont have to do that now, only
shell-holes, and dodge them in a hurry to get one last look at the
German army before it puts on its good old soup and fish--or whatever
the German for civilized clothing is, that is if they have any.

But you are right girlie, to boost the smokes. We'll need them for a
long while yet. I know you have been obliged to keep your own from your
Ma and what with not really caring for peppermints it has been hard all
these years. But while her trapeese work stood alone in its day and no
one on Broadway is more respected at this writing and as a
mother-in-law I have no complaint on her outside of her wearing my
dress-pumps, this one time she is dead wrong. Soldiers are not always
acrobats and they do need to smoke and your Ma will put herself in the
small-time reform class if she dont look out. When I think of the stuff
I seen up and down Broadway and elsewhere in my days which could be
reformed and no one miss it, I get hot when I hear this talk about
keeping the army pure. Take it or leave it, but the truth is the Huns
has kept us pure alright--they sweat all the wickedness out of us
running after them.

But to get back to the tobacco stuff. Dont let nothing hinder you from
bothering everybody you see to send smokes. We'll use 'em up never fear!
And if you was to be walking down the Avenue or mebbe Broadway sometime
and a box in your hand and asking for Smoke Funds or something whichever
way its done--and your Ma was to fight her way through the howling mob
which would undoubtedly be surrounding you on account of course the best
known parlor-dancing act in America and the world wouldn't walk out
looking for funds and not draw a mob which was only too glad to see you
for five cents in the smoke-fund-box instead of two dollars in the box
office--well, anyways, if your Ma was to force her way through this mob
which with her weight she could do easily, why she would forgive you in
the end if not right there on the street, and I believe that a
hand-organ would start and play hearts and flowers at that.

Anyways, keep up the good work only never mind the monograms as long as
they taste like tobacco and can be lit. And if you fall out with Ma just
tell her this story which I will tell you and she will see mebbe God
didn't put tobacco in the world merely for little slum children to pluck
on their two weeks vacation in all its green beauty.

Well, the story is like this sweetie, and I will write it as good as I
can and if it seems comicle go ahead and get a good laugh only take it
or leave it, it was no comedy at the time. But if you was to news it
around mebbe the folks at home would start dropping something beside
coppers in them soda-fountain boxes you was talking about, and commence
trying to squeeze a quarter through the slot now and again. Come to
think of it, the biggest thing a copper penny can buy is the feeling a
person gets from dropping one in a Belgium milk bottle or home for
crippled children or Merry Xmas for the Salvation Army. You know the
cheap chest it gives you. Many a liberty bond has been left in the
Govts. hands by a prospective buyer stumbling on a "drop a penny" box in
a cigar store on his way to the cupon-cutters, or I miss my guess. I've
done the same in my day and the man who says he aint raised his own
stock with himself by giving a nickle to the Newsboys Annual Outing is
as big a liar as the guy which says he never loved another girl. And if
pennies was to be cut out of the currency a whole lot of cheap
philanthropists would have to make their conscience work or fight.

Well, anyways you go right on boosting the smoke-fund and never mind Ma.
She'll learn different some day.

Now about this story I was going to tell you. First off leave me explain
that the drinking regulations over here is different to uniforms than on
the Rialto and America. I hunch it that the managers and booking agents
and so forth in the U. S. Military Amusements Co. inc. figure that a few
of the rules have to be let down while the big show is on. Same as the
stars can lean against a No Smoking sign on the big time and roll a
makin's quite openly. So when on leave and even sometimes in the
dressing-room or I should say rest-billets a bottle of wine is not out
of order. Very different sweetie, from the night Goldringer gave me in
my uniform the big send off at the Ritz with all the newspaper bird and
the leads and everybody and me and you the only sober person present, do
you remember?

Well, its no news to you to say that I havent forgot I am a professional
dancer and good condition is my middle name for my future, not to
mention my present contract with Uncle Sam and that a sober man is worth
more to both--also to you and myself.

But the Allies dont look on liquor like we do. As a matter of fact they
seldom look on what we would call liquor at all, hardly ever getting a
glympse of anything hard such as rye, scotch or gin, and a cocktail
being practically a stranger and a repulsive one at that to them. But
wine is something different again. Which while with us it is the high
sign for a big party and flowing only in extremely good classes such as
at the lobster layouts--leaving aside dago spaghetti parlors when folks
is resting--with them it is a common matter and everybody drinks it and
while there aint much kick to it, still it has it all over the water we
get and coming under their idea of necessities, is low in price. Of
course by wine I do not mean champagne like we used to for publicity
purposes order for our dinner in public, but stuff made out of common
grapes, I guess, and with the seltzer left out.

Well, dearie, the reason I hand you all this info. is that the story I
am going to tell you got started because of this wine. "In Venus
Veritas" you know or so they say, and I confess that in trying to get a
little kick out of the stuff I got sort of lit and that's what caused me
the story.


II

WELL, we was sort of waiting off stage as you might call it, in a little
town in Belgium, our act having just been on and a pretty lively one it
was and the Captain give us a pretty good hand on it, although as you
know the audience didn't wait for the finish but left us their orchestra
seats or front line trenches which we moved into and then give up to the
next number on the bill and come back to watch from the wings, or would
of only we was a little too far off.

Well, the Capt. felt so good and the water was so bad that he sent a
delegation back for a little liquid refreshment. They have big jugs over
here like the molasses is kept in at home only here it is frankly boose
and no one pretends any different. And the game is this. The one which
volunteers for this dangerous work, if broke himself, takes a swig or so
out of the jug he is bringing back which it dont show on account of
their not being transparent and so the officer dont get any surprise
until toward the end of the jug and even so may think he took more than
he had thought. The private will take only a little from each but if
there is jugs enough many a mickle makes quite a jag.

Well, me and a fellow named McFarland and a French kid called Ceasare
was each given two of these molasses jugs which looked like props, and
was sent off to a village some place in congnito for you couldn't
pronounce it. And we was glad enough to go because among other things we
was short of smokes. Some cleaver actor had accidintly lit the last
mess fire with a bale of Virginias and there wasnt hardly a smoke among
us.

You just figure out how it would feel if you was to have a bath and do
your exercise and eat a swell breakfast and then realise there wasnt a
pill in the house! Think sweetie, how your brest would swell up with
alarm, and the royal fit you would throw while the elevator boy was on
his way to the corner drug store! Why figure even the way you feel once
you get a cigarette in your face and then cant find a match for two
whole minutes. Well, take it or leave it, I tell you that feeling is a
whole lot multiplied on the victorious fields of France when little
friend cigarette is notable by its absence. A empty house on an opening
night is nothing to it. So you can see where me and Ceasare and Mac was
glad to get in the neighborhood of one, leaving even all considerations
of the wine aside.

Well, we started out carrying each two jugs and as we went the fellow
which acts as usher, or sentry on the road hollers at us do we know the
way and Ceasare and him jabbered at each other in French in the
remarkable fluent way they do over here. And Ceasare laughed and when we
asked what it was he said the guy told him to look out Fritz didnt get
us on the open road, which was certainly some joke for of course we
hadn't been able to get near enough to Fritz to hear him in some time.
So we laughed, too, for if any snipers had managed to stay behind and
opened up on us we could of spotted them and wiped them out if they had
kept it up.

Well sweetie, there wasnt any road exactly toward the place we was bound
for on account of our having done considerable trespassing on private
property and taking little notice of fences whether barbed-wire or
civilian or shell-holes or trenches but having went straight ahead. And
after the last 5 years on upper Broadway you will realize it comes easy
enough to me, I often having come unharmed from the Claridge to the
Astor, and the French fields has nothing on that crossing. So to me that
first part of the trip was as little or nothing and I was the
cheerfulist of the party though we was all pretty cheerful and singing a
little song of Ceasare's which I dont know what it means but I guess I'd
better not write it in for fear you would.

Well, it was late afternoon and awful cold for the time of year, and I
was thinking that at home the frost was on the pumpkin and the pumpkin
would soon be in the pie and the turkey was about to get the axe and
Halloween was due and a lot of nice things like that. And after a lot of
kilomets had been covered, we come to the funny little town which looked
like the back-drop to the opening seane in a musical comedy only all
shot to pieces like it had been on the road with a No. 2 company for a
long and successful tower.

Well, we come to it, anyhow, and being on duty in a way as far as them
jugs went--we went with them and took what we could afford our ownselves
while we watched papa Ceasare fill 'em up. Then the tobacco dept.
claimed our attention only to find there wasn't any!

Well, sweetie, I have tried to put over the way I felt at these glad
tidings and the censor wouldn't of stood for it, so out she goes! But I
felt that way all right and so did Mac and Ceasare.

"I'll no beleeve ut!" says Mack which he talks a funny kind of way like
Harry Lauder. "I'll no beleeve ut--theer must be some someplace aboot!"

"Say la guyer!" says Ceasare and gives a shrug, although he was a lot
more disappointed than Mac on account of Mac's really caring more for
liquor than smoke any day. "Say la Guyer!" he says, and asks his pa why
it happened and his pa tells him and he translates it to Mac and me.

"He say a young lady have took it all only hour ago for free to
soldiers," he explains.

And take it or leave it, but I was certainly a little sore for although
I am the first to believe in the other fellow getting it, still this
time we all felt like the other fellow was us, and no doubt she had took
it to the nearest camp or hut, and so I ast which way was it she went
for mebbe we would get some of it. And then come a big surprise.

"No 'ospitil here!" Ceasare explained again. "An no 'ut! It ees too soon
after we take it. Then papa says she is first cross red lady we have
seen and she speak in French!"

"Well, that's funny!" I says--and of course dearie you understand this
had been enemy ground only a little before and that there was a
wine-shop going was a miricle and only for it being Ceasare's papa we
wouldn't of got none, which is how he come to be along with us.

Well, we all felt real sore and disappointed but took it like a man for
of course a red cross nurse would get it for the wounded and we had our
health.

So papa give us all another round and we took the big molasses jugs and
started off. It was getting toward twilight and pretty cold and I will
say it give me sort of sore feeling towards the folks at home and blamed
them for letting me be without a cigarette and you know how it is about
two drinks makes me a little sore at things and I began to cheer up
after the third and this was early in the evening.

Not so Mac. He has a talent for drink. Well, we had just about left the
motion-picture village behind us when he commenced to sing and while I
dont know what it was about, I will put it down this time because you
wont know neither.

    "Fortune if thou'll but gie me still
     Hale Breeks, a scone, an' whisky gill,
     An' rowth o' ryme to rave at will,
         Tak' a' the rest,

    "An' deal 't about as they blind skill
         Directss thee best."

Well, naturally we applauded which is always safe when you don't
understand a thing, and it certainly was comical for Mac is generally a
quiet cuss and a tightwad as well. Then I spoke up.

"These jugs is too heavy!" I says. "Let's lighten 'em up a bit."

Well they thought so and we done it and felt better and then I sang
them:

    "Give me your love
     The sunshine of your eyes!"

And both Ceasare and Mac commenced to cry. Mac set down his jugs and we
done the same and then Mac done the most generous thing I ever seen a
Scotchman do even in liquor. He reached inside his bonnett and took out
three cigarettes, shook the bonnett to show they was actually the last,
and give us each one and one to himself.

Well, we all sat down on a old motor chassis or what was left of it, and
burned them smokes like insense, not speaking a word! But putting that
red cross lady which had been ahead of us out of our minds and thinking
only of how we was going to give Mac our next packages from home when
they come, and he mebbe thinking of how he was going to get them. And
then we all made our jugs a little lighter and by this time it was
pretty dark and we commenced to hurry back. Before we had went very far
we had to hesitate about which way. Because sweetie, take it or leave
it, what you write about getting lost in the new subway has nothing on
finding your way about after dark by yourself in this part of the world.

Well, Mac was sure we come one way and I was sure we come another and
Ceasare he had a different hunch from either of us. So we all took
another little drink as it was getting mighty cold by now, and in the
end we started off Ceasare's way because why wouldnt he know best which
way was right and him born and raised right there on the farm? We
trusted to his judgment just like him and Mac would of trusted me to
tell the taxi-driver where to go from Keens.

So we went like he said, but somehow we didn't seem to get no place in
particular although we kept on going for a long time: I couldn't say how
long, but it seemed like a Battery to Harlem job to me only by now I
loved everybody but Fritz and a sort of fog had come up or so I thought,
and we was all singing, each our own sweet songs but at the same time.

"Lets throw away a few of these jugs," I remember saying--and really
there was so little in some of them it wasn't worth carrying back so we
just finished them off and threw them away and then we come upon a
little path--or it felt like it.

"Allou!" shouted Ceasare, "we are almost there!" and with that we sure
got the surprise of our lifes, for rat-tat-tat-tat-tat come a sputter of
machine gun fire right at us.


III

AT first we was very much jolted by this though unhurt, and then we
commenced to think it was a joke. Here we was going in behind our own
lines and being fired upon.

"Shut up, ye dam fools!" Mac hollered. "Can ye no recognize yer own
people?"

Then Ceasare yelled in French, but they paid no attention to us.
_Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!_ it come again, and this time it made me real mad.
I figured that if they didn't quit their nonsense somebody was liable to
get hurt. So I saved what was left in my last jug, threw the thing
away, and told Ceasare and Mac to come on and leave us beat up the poor
boobs with the nasty sense of humor and show them where they got off.
Well, Mac and him thought this was a good idea so they done like I done
and we ran up the little hill which we could see our way pretty good in
spite of the dark because they never let up on us but kept right on
spitting fire. Well, we got very mad by this time and to tell the truth
I can't very well recall just what did happen only when we got to the
gun the boys was German!

Well, take it or leave it, I aint had a jolt like that since the night
Goldringer raised our salary of his own accord after we put on the La
Tour Trot. And I only wisht I could remember more about what happened.
But for quite a few minutes I was terrible busy; and I guess I better
admit I was tight--awful tight. Of course there was five of them and
only three of us, and equally of course we licked them badly and took
only one prisoner but not being anything for a lady to read I will not
give particulars and anyways I dont remember any. Of course it was one
of them few remaining nest of hornets which we had joked about, but
really hadn't believed was there.

Well, when it was all over but the cheering and we was sure these birds
had been all by their lonesome, we was pretty well sobered and hot and
everything. And the first thing we done was take a look around in a few
places for tobacco. And take it or leave it--we didn't find any! Not a
smoke among the lot! Watter you know about that?

But one good thing we got out of the scrap was our senses back and it
was easy enough to spot about where our own lines would be. So after we
figured it out, and taking Fritz, the one prisoner, along, we commenced
to start off that way and you can bet the poor boob was glad to go with
us. You would of thought he had wanted to be with us all the time. Just
like after a election at home. Cant find anybody who didnt vote the
winning ticket. Which joke you may not understand, sweetie, being a
lady, and I will not now stop to explain.

Well, we started back alright and as we come, I got the story which I
want to tell you which commenced really when we come to that old barn.
Only I had to explain how we come to be there or you wouldnt get the
idea of what I am driving at for you to make your Ma understand.

Ever since I fell out of my airplane and was in the hospital and
reenlisted the only place they'd take me back was in the infantry, I
done a lot of thinking--and some of it stuff which might mebbe sound
awful queer coming from me, especially after some of the language I have
been known to use in my day, and while I hope I aint become mushy, I
certainly do believe there is more to religion and such things than we
have thought. Take it or leave it, mighty few fellows have lived through
this war, far less fought through it, without getting religion of some
kind out of it. I wonder can you get me? And make Ma get it too. So I'll
tell what happened and you see if miricles is over yet or not for this
is a true fact and not a story somebody told me.

Well, after we cleaned up that machine gun nest and had a cute little
live German prisoner of our very own, we took him down the hill with us
the best way we could in the dark and it full of holes and what not.
There wasn't a bit of light--no moon nor stars nor nothing, and a wet
sort of smell that made us wish for a smoke the way hardly nothing else
is ever wished for, except mebbe a motion-picture salary or a drink of
water after a big night--not on the desert.

Well we got on pretty good because we was nearly sober now and Ceasare
he knew where we was going, and this time he really did, and so we kept
up pretty good. It commenced to rain a little and the big drops felt
awful nice against my cheeks which was burning hot. Made me think of
when I was a kid back in Topeka and digging out to school and a pair of
red mittens I had which my mother had made them--good knitting and well
made like the sweater I had on that very minute which she also knit. And
I thought of me and you and our snow-scene when we done that dance on
the Small Time with the sleighbells on our heels--remember dear? Before
we had really made good except with each other? And I thought about love
too and a lot of fool stuff like that. And then I heard a funny sound
for thereabouts. It was a woman moaning and crying.

Well, at first I thought mebbe I was crazy or imagined it, but Mac who
was walking in front with our own little Fritz stopped short and so did
Fritz and listened. It come again--the most dismal thing you ever want
to hear. I turned to Ceasare and he had heard it.

"Say drool," he says, which means "Its funny" only it wasnt and he didnt
mean it that way, but the other way. You know.

"It sure is!" I says. "There she goes again!"

"I think theers a wee bit housie over theere!" says Mac.

"It is the barn of my cousin's uncle," says Ceasare. "We better go
look."

So with that we started across the road to where sure enough was a funny
little barn--stone with a grass roof--peculiar to these parts, I guess.
The nearer we got the louder the noise was, but no words to it, only
sobbing very low and despairing and sort of sick--and a female--no doubt
of it. There wasn't any light nor anybody moving about as far as we
could tell.

"Gee! What'll we do?" I says in a whisper. "We can't pass it up!"

"Naw--we mun tak' a look inside!" whispers Mac.

"Certinmount," says Ceasare; "Mais--be careful! We put the Boch in first
and see if some trick is up!"

It being Ceasare's cousin's uncle's barn he knew where the door was,
and the three of us shoved Fritz up to it and made him understand he was
to open it and go in ahead of the crew. We finally got it over with
signs and shoves, because the bird didnt speak nothing but German and we
hadnt a word of it among us. But still we made him do it and he did, and
we pulled our guns and stood close behind and I stood closest and pulled
not alone my gun but the little electric flashlight you sent me which I
flashed in as quick as the door was opened.


IV

AND take it or leave it--there was a woman with a baby in her arms! She
was rather a young round-faced woman and that kid was awfully little and
held close under a big dark cloak the woman wore. The poor soul looked
tired out and she had no hat and her hair was all down. The inside of
the barn was a wreck and the rain was coming in through a big shellhole
in the roof. She was all alone, we at once got that, and at sight of the
German uniform which was all she seen at first, she give a shriek of joy
and got up onto her feet.

"Got si danke!" she cried. "Ich habe----"

Then she seen the rest of us and shrunk back, covering the kid with her
cloak. Fritz said something to her--quite a lot in a hurry, and
evidently told her he was a prisoner, and now that she had spilled the
beans, so was she. And of course even under the circumstances, she was.
But take it or leave it, I certainly did feel queer when I went up to
that lady with the little baby in that barn. For German or no German the
situation was--well--it certainly got my goat. I took off my hat and
made a bow.

"Lady," I commenced, "have no fear. Don't let us throw no scare into
you. We ain't Huns--that is, I beg your pardon, but what I mean is you
are perfectly safe and we will take care of you."

Well, the way she looked at me would of wrung a heart of stone. Her eyes
was blue and she just stared at me as if I had hurt her--which of
course was far from any mind there.

"Don't be scared," I says again. "You and the baby will get good care.
Just come with us if you are able!"

When I spoke of the kid she give the poor little smothered thing a quick
look and drew her cloak around it closer. Gee! but she looked fierce!
She had quit crying but not a word out of her!

"You try!" I says to Ceasare. "The poor thing mebbe understands French."

So Ceasare, who was as much shot to pieces at the sight as I was, come
forward.

"Madame!" says he, bowing with his cap in his hand. Then he shoots a lot
of French about restes, au succuoor, and stuff I know meant "cut the
worry." But she didnt get it any better than she had my line of talk,
and only kept on looking scared.

Well by this time Mac come out of his stupor; but there was no use
trying Scotch on her, that was plain. So there was nothing to it except
forward march. For one thing my torch wouldnt of lasted much longer and
for another it sure was getting late.

"Does your cousin's uncle which owns the barn have a house anywheres
near, where we could leave her?" I asked Ceasare.

"All dead in this town!" he says cheerfully. "And this is the only
building left I think it!"

"Then there's nothing to do but take her along to headquarters," I says,
and off we started, she not saying a word.

That was some trip! I want to tell you sweetie it was the worst part of
the whole war to me. You know I got a heart and I felt just fierce for
that poor little German mother. All the way in, while we was helping her
along I kept wishing I knew how on earth she come to get in that place.
She seemed real feeble at times and we lifted her across the worst
places. I tried to get her to let me carry the baby, but she held on to
it like grim death and wouldnt leave any of us touch it--and it was so
quiet I commenced to get scared.

"More than likely its dead!" I whispered to Ceasare and he thought so
too.

Before we got in, we had carried her almost a mile, taking turns with
her on our crossed hands, and the odd feller guarding our Hun. And then
we came to the end of about the very worst and longest hike I ever took
including the time the Queen of the Island Company got stranded in New
Rochelle. The sentry across that mud hole of a slushy road was the
welcomest sight in the world.

"Wot the 'ell yer got?" he says when he recognized us.

"One Gentleman Hun prisoner and one lady ditto in very bad shape!" I
says.

"Wot the 'ell!" he says again. And then he passed us and we reported.

Say sweetie, take it or leave it, but I had honest clean forgot all
about that wine which we had been sent for in the first place. I tell
you I was so worried about that poor woman! And it was not until the
five of us was standing in Capt. Haskell's quarters with the light from
his ceiling glaring at us and him also glaring from behind his mustache,
that I even commenced to remember it. But I had to report so I reported
for the bunch of us and in strict detail as good as I could remember.
All this while the woman sat in a chair, her face like a stone, and my
heart just aching for her.

Well, when I got through taking the most nervous curtin-call of my
life--and take it or leave it, if the German army would ever of been as
nervous as I was then, the war would of ended that minute. Capt. Haskell
beckoned to the lady.

"Come here, please!" he says very kind. "And let me see the baby!"

She got up and went over very softly. Then she stood in front of him and
commenced to laugh and laugh.

"Pigs of Americans!" she said. "Fools to carry me! That's not a
baby--its twenty cartons of cigarettes!"

Then she threw back her cloak and under it there she was dressed in Red
Cross uniform.

"I disguised myself and went to the village!" she went on in perfectly
good English. "And I bought all the tobacco there.

"On my way back to my own lines I was fool enough to lose my way and to
cry over it! That is all!"

And its enough, aint it dear? For you do get me, dont you? Them twenty
cartons of cigarettes was a miricle to us and the one we needed the most
of any right at that moment. Eh, what? as the English say. And her
taking such a chance to get them for Fritz shows how bad off the German
army must be, don't it? And so tell this to your Ma and get her to quit
that foolish anti-smoke society she's forming--because its the bunk--and
I am ever your loving life and dancing partner, JIM.

P. S. Just got your letter. That certainly is a good one on Ma. Smoking
a pipe! And if you hadnt opened the door so sudden you'd never in this
world of caught her. And if she does claim her grandmother did it too,
all you got to say is so did many a soldier's grandmother.

P. S. No. 2. I forgot to say that a French General has given us a kiss
on both cheeks and a medel for that job. And its the first time I ever
got anything but a headache by going on a party.




IV

ANYTHING ONCE


I

AINT it funny the things that comes into a person's head when they are
rubbing cold cream onto their nose? All sorts of stuff, some of it good
sense and some of it the bunk. But most of it pretty near O.K. If some
one was to take down the ideas I get at such a sacred hour, I'd be out
of the dancing game and into the highbrow class just as quick as the
printer got through his job.

It sure is a time when a woman's true thoughts come to the surface along
with the dust and last night's make-up, and many a big resolve has been
made owing to that cleanly habit. Wasn't there some wise bird made up a
quotation about cleanliness being next to God knows what? Well, believe
you me, its the truth, for once a woman starts in with the cold cream
all alone,--and she sure does it at no other time--there is no telling
what will come of it beside a clean pink face.

With me personally myself, thats where most of my ideas about life come
from--right out of the cold cream tube! And while indulging in this well
known womanly occupation the other evening I commenced thinking about
rest and how important it is for us Americans--and of the way we go
after it--like it was something we had to catch and catch quick or it
would get away from us. Do you get me? If not, leave me tell you what a
friend of mine, which has just been mustard out of the service says to
me, when I was checking up his experiences abroad while he was checking
up what the waiter had put down.

"My idea of rest?" he says. "Why taking Belleau Woods after three
restless weeks in the trenches," he says.

Which sort of puts the nut in the shell, as the saying is. And also at
the same time reminds me of the rest I just recently took.

Not that I generally need one any more than any other thoroughly
successful star, for heavens knows the best known parlor dancing act in
the world and Broadway, which mine undoubtedly is, dont need to rest
because the managers theirselves always come after me and resting I
leave to the booking-agency hounds. But this time it was bonea fido, and
come about in a sort of odd way.


To commence at the start it begun with me falling for the movies, which
Gawd knows I only done it for the money, their being no art in it, and
they having hounded me into them for a special fillum. And of course
many well known girls like Mary Garden and Nazimova go into pictures and
even myself, but its simply because of being hounded, as I say. But once
in you earn your money, believe you me, and I have stood around waiting
for the sun like Moses, or whoever it was, until my feet nearly froze to
the pallasades before jumping off, only of course it was a dummy they
threw after I had made the original motions of the leap to death. And
the worst part is once you are signed up on one of these "payment to be
made wheather the party of the first part (thats me) is working or not"
you got to do like they say, and a whole lot of the "not working" means
plain standing around waiting for the director or the camera-man or the
rain to quit, and what us public favorites suffers when on the job is
enough to make the photographor's Favorite of Grainger, Wyo., abandon
the career she might of had in favour of domestic service or something
like that where she'd get a little time to herself.

Well anyways my judgment having slipped to the extent of having signed
my sense of humor away for six months at twenty-two hundred a week, I
was in the very middle of a fillum called the Bridge to Berlin when one
day, just as a big brute of a German officer by the name of O'Flarety
had me by the throat in a French chateau, the studio manager comes in
and says the armistice is signed and the war is over, and we was to quit
as who would release a war fillum now and we was to start on something
entirely different, only he didn't know what the hell it was to be and
here was eight thousand feet wasted--and believe you me I was sore
myself for we had shot that strangling sceene six times by then and my
marcelle wave was completely ruined by it, and I would of liked to of
had something to show for it.

But anyways, orders was to quit and so me and Ma and the two fool dogs
and Musette left the wilds of Jersey and after a stormy voyage across
the Hudson come safely home to our modest little apartment on the drive,
there to not work at 22 hundred a week until Goldringer got the studio
manager to get the scenario editor to get me a new story, which at the
price was not of long duration for while Gawd knows they dont care how
long a person stands around waiting to be shot, they just naturally hate
to pay you for doing the same thing at home in comfort.

Well anyways the bunk that scenario editor picked out was something
fierce. I wouldn't of been screened dead in it. But it just happened I
had a idea for a scenario myself, which come about through somebody
having give me a book for Christmas and one night, the boy having forgot
to bring the papers, I read it. And was it a cute book? It was! I had a
real good cry over it, and while it wasn't exactly a book for a dancer,
I could see that there was good stuff in it. So finally me and Ma
stopped into Goldringer's office after he had twice telephoned for me
and handed him a little surprise along with the volume.

"I got a idea for a picture, Al," I says, "and here's the book of it."

"Well Miss La Tour, what's the name of it and idea?" says he, chewing
on his cigar strong and not even looking at the book but throwing it to
the stenographer, which is a general rule always in the picture game and
one reason we don't see such a crowd of swell fillums.

"The name is Oliver Twist," I says. "It's a juvinile lead the way it
stands, but I want it fixed up a little, with me as Olivette Twist--the
editor can fix it so's that will be all right. It's really a swell part.
I could wear boy's clothes some of the time."

"Huh! Olivette Twist," says Goldringer, taking back the book and looking
at the cover of it. "Always thought it was a breakfast food! But if you
say its O.K. we'd better get it. Where is this feller Dickens? We'll
wire him for the rights. Friend of yours?"

You see, if anybody brings scenarios personally, a star in particular,
it's generally a friends.

"No," I says. "It was sent me by Jim along with a letter which shows the
bird is well known," I says. "And is in Westminister Abby, London,
England, which Jim says proves his class.

"Must be a swell apartment," says Goldringer. "All right we'll send a
cable to him and see if the picture rights is gone or not. If the boy
is so well known he may stick out for a big price. This is Thursday. We
may hear from him by Monday or Tuesday, and we'll get a scenario ready
anyways so's we can begin to shoot not later than a week from to-day.
Until then," he says, "run along and amuse yourself and dont do anything
I wouldnt."

Well, me and Ma was shown out then and down on Broadway Ma see some
salt-water taffy in a drug-store and wanted to go in and by it which I
had to prevent because outside of Ma being in no need of nourishment,
she weighing considerable over the heavy-weight requirements already and
Gawd knows if she was to have went back into the circus it would no
longer be on the trapeese and a certain party in the side-show would
have a strong competitor for her job and it wouldn't be the human
skeleton either. But leaving off the consideration how would it look for
us to go up the Ave. in my new wine-colored limousine which I earned
myself and no one can say different with truth--and eating stuff like
that out of a folded paper box? Ma certainly has my health well in hand
and heart and its seldom we quarrel over any little thing, but she
certainly has no class instinct, or instinct for class--do you get me?
And when I try to make her see that them little refinements is what
makes me the big success I am, she sometimes kicks and if its hunger,
its got to be met immediately if not one way, why then another. So in
lieu, as the poet says, of the taffy I had to take her to the Ritz and
watch her put away 6 vanillia eclairs at two bits each and a quart of
cocoa, not that I begrudge the money, only believe you me the way all
hotels charge nowadays is rapidly making Bolshivik out of even we
capatalists. Do you get me? You do! But of course in my line you got to
keep before the public in the right way.

Well anyways Ma complained over the loss of that taffy the whole way
through the six eclairs, which it was certainly a little hard on me to
have to sit there and watch her while for professional reasons eating
only one of these tomato surprises which never surprise but the once, on
my figures account, and certainly its a fact that the two of us was
doing the next best thing to what we wanted instead of the thing itself
which is one of the prices of success. So, as is also often the case at
such times, I was a little mean to Ma on account of having been mean
already--do you get me?

"Mamma," I says. "You certainly are getting heavier. It's a crime for you
to wear these narrow skirts!"

Ma give me a searching look the same as used to lead up to caster oil
when I was a kid, and then took the half of a eclair at one bit before
replying.

"Now Mary Gilligan you needn't take out your artistic temperament or any
other ailment on me!" she says as firmly as the eclair would permit.
"Just because Jim is in France yet, and your moleskin dolman was a
failure and you aint been occupied daily for a week or more, and slipped
up on doing your setting up exercises this morning which I wouldnt of
mentioned only you started it," she says. "Its no excuse for picking on
me," she says. "What if I am a little plump? My Gawd aint I earned the
right to be? What with three kids and your Pa to bring up and the center
trapeese in the circus right through it all except when absolutely
necessary? You dont know what a woman _can_ go through!"

"Dont I, just!" I snapped for my Gawd aint it the truth every woman has
the very worst troubles that any woman ever had? And she sure gets sore
when another woman sets up to go them one better!

"No you don't!" retorts Ma with that maddening air of being older than
me which she uses to squelch me every time she cant get me any other
way. "No you dont!" she says. "You never brought up three kids without a
nurse girl while on the trapeese--you never brought up a thing but two
fool dogs and you even leave them to the carelessness of a personal
maid," she says. "Poor dears, Gawd knows what will become of their
little canine minds and morals!"

"Now Ma!" I begged, because she aughter know that is a sore point with
me and not intention, and she had me on the raw.

"Well then!" she says. "You got a swell job and no troubles only mabe a
sluggish liver and you aint the only woman in America which Gen.
Pershing cant yet spare the husband of," she says. "And mabe I do need
to reduce a little," which was her way of apologizing. And just as this
lull occurred who should come into sight but Maison Rosabelle, her which
runs the shop where myself and all the most chic professionals gets
their clothes. She was all dressed up like a plush horse with real
sables, part of which must of come off them simple refined little gowns
I had made for the Bridge to Berlin that was ruined by the armistice.
Her hair had just been rehennered and her face was as fresh as a
tea-rose straight from the fragrent facial massage. She smiled and
sailed down on the two of us which we welcomed with the usual relief of
a family quarreling when neither sees the way to win out and have got to
go on living together. In other words she automatically buried the
hatchet for us, as the school books say.

"So pleased to of run into you, dearies!" she says. "For I'm goin' to
Atlantic City to-morrow for a little rest."

No sooner was them words out from between her lip-rouge than I see a
vision of salt-water taffy arising in Ma's eyes. Believe you me Ma is
certainly hard to pry loose from anything she has once set her mind on!
And Maison had to continue in that cordial manner.

"Why dont you run down for a few days?" she says. "It'll do you good.
You're looking kinda pulled down Mrs. Gilligan!" she says--and of course
Ma fell for that.

"I do feel a little low!" she says, finishing off her cocoa. "And
Mary--Marie here is waiting until they get a answer to a cable which
was sent to England by the studio. I understand we may have quite a
wait, so I really believe we might go along."


II

NOW as I looked at Ma it come over me that mabe she had the right dope.
When people that live together, especially if not friends, but
relations, commence to get a little on each others nerves, going away on
a trip is good for what ails them. The only trouble is that in the case
of females they generally go together. Still, with the whole bunch of
new and different stuff it gives them to fight over--R.R. tickets, and
who wired for these horrid rooms, and I told you to bring a heavier
coat, and etc., they generally get straightened out quite a lot. Even
the idea of going along with Maison didnt worry me then, I having been
on tower many a time when the No. 1 Company went out and Ma the same for
years, and we generally speak, even to the publicity man, no matter if
we have made Rochester, Buffalo and Chicago in a quick jump playing
matinées as well. So I am without the wholesome and well founded fear
of taking a pleasure-trip with friends which is the bitter fruit of most
persons experience of the same. Besides, I sort of like Maison, which of
course her real name is Maisie Brady, and her funny little husband,
which is also still in France, she not being dependant any more than
myself nor would she hold him back from serving his country only I dont
hardly believe she urged him to go for quite the patriotic reasons I
did, he having been a traveling man and so when he retired on her income
she didnt feel as natural and affectionate and homelike and all that as
when he was away most of the time. But at any rate I and she were both
war-widows and old friends from the time her mother was lady-lion tamer
and mine on the trapeese, and so in spite of the bills she charges me
she has more refinement than most people and so I says all right, we'll
go to Atlantic City and we'll be on the one twenty train to-morrow.

"Thats sweet, dearie!" says Maison. "We'll get a swell rest!"

Then she set sail and was off with a Jewish gentleman friend, which had
been waiting at the entrance all this time with a gardenia in his
buttonhole. And Ma and me called for the check and dogs and limousine
and hitched our way homeward through the traffic to our quiet little
apartment with 7 windows with the beautiful outlook of the river and the
R.R. tracks and etc.

Then while Musette packed only three trunks and my gold-fitted dressing
case and a couple of hat boxes and my specially designed jewellery box
and the travelling hamper for the dogs, we having decided to travel
light and probably not stay over three or four days, Ma went into the
all-tiled kitchen and commenced getting up a little smack of cold beef
and potato salad and fried cheese sandwiches and coffee and a few hot
biscuits and honey so's we wouldn't have to go out and eat, which Ma
certainly loves to do and no cook ever stands it for more than a week
and the current cook's week was up that morning before we went downtown.

Well anyway while she was doing this I went into the drawing-room which
is all fitted up in handsome gold furniture--that the dealer said was
one of the Louis periods. Louis Cohen I guess,--I never remember quite.
And to put a record on the phonograph in the case I had especially built
in the same style at fifty dollars extra and all the instalments paid,
and streached out as good as I could manage to on the chaise loung,
which is a sort of housebroken steamer-chair, and while John Macormik's
own voice sang my little grey home in the west to me in the privacy of
my own home, I thought dreamingly about Jim and how much I was missing
him and how swell we danced together and how kind and loving and brave
he was and how refined, and believe me he's about the only theatrical
male that don't murder a dress suit, and how horrible it was to be
seperated from him after being married only two weeks and what fools we
was to have danced together in every first-class theatre in America and
only got married so recent, for if only we'd been married sooner mabe
the pain of seperation wouldnt of been so great by now. Who knows? And
believe you me it was some pain, and I had myself crying before I knew
it. For I sure am stuck on that poor simp and my only war-work aint been
done on the screene, Gawd knows, when I give him up to whatever the
Allies was fighting for, which if it dont turn out to be as represented,
believe you me, myself and a whole lot of other girls is going to want
to know why!!

Well anyways, before Ma had the biscuits baked and I had run jada jada
and sing me to sleep, I was wild to get away to the pure country ocean
air and some healthy outdoor exercise which would help me forget my
loneliness. And a lot of quiet and rest and sleep, with the ocean
pounding me to the pillow and all that.

I had only a sort of twenty minute small time sketch of a idea of what
Atlantic City was like on account of me having been there for openings
only and getting in at four forty five with the show beginning at eight
fifteen and the washup you need after the trip and Ma always insisting
on me doing a twenty minute practice in my room and underwear before
every opening which is perfectly correct and one of the principal things
which has made my handsprings what they are, and getting dinner far
enough in advance to do the hand-springs in time. I knew little nor
nothing of what Jim calls the Coney Island that went to finishing school
except that there is swimming and horseback riding and a boardwalk that
any one without French heels to catch in the cracks can have a elegant
walk on. What little sniff of air I had outside the theatre and my
bedroom at the hotel give me a appatite for more, which up to now I
never had the opportunity to get because of always being with a
high-class show that went right back to N.Y. Sunday to open on Broadway.
But now I was going like a regular American lady citizen to rest and get
full of health and do as the regular resorters did. And I was glad. I
was so anxious to keep myself in a pure atmosphere for Jim's sake and
the studio wasn't exactly the farm--do you get me? You do! And a rest in
the country was the very thing. I got quite excited thinking about it;
dried my tears, stopped the phonograph and made sure that Musette put in
my riding suit, bathing ditto, and walking boots. And when this was done
I felt better already as the saying is, and fully able to take some of
the nourishment Ma had got up.

The minute we set down to the table I see that she had also been making
good resolutions and waited till she got ready to confess. It come after
the seventh tea-biscuit and honey. On her part I mean, I only taking
coldmeat and salad and things I dont like much, for reasons before
stated.

"Mary Gilligan!" she says. "I believe I'm getting heavier," she says,
just as if it occurred to her for the first time. "And I have decided
that while I am away to Atlantic City I wont eat to amount to anything
and reduce in other ways the whole time I'm there!"

"You dont say," I says, without batting an eye. "Do you really think you
need to?"

"I do!" she says. "This is my last real meal. And you needn't try to
persuade me out of it."

I didn't. And next morning right after breakfast we caught the one
twenty, hats, dogs, Musette, and all, and met up with Maison Rosabelle,
which was dressed in a simple little trotters costume of chiffon and
ermine which looked like it had been made in Babylon. I mean B.C. not
L.I. And with her was a little surprise in the way of the same Jewish
gentleman, Mr. Freddy Mayer, with another gardenia on him and a fine
line of plausable explinations.

"Aint it a co-co-strange, Freddy just happens to be going our way!"
cooed Maisie with all the innocence of a N.Y. livery-stable pidgeon.

"Yes, I'm taking a special offering of champagne to a special friend in
the hotel business there," says Mr. Freddy. "And with three such
beautiful lady companions its no hardship to leave Manhattan behind nor
the Bronx," says he gaily. "Altho when we come back we may find the
Aldermen has decided to change both names after July first," says the
humorous dog.

"Will you please kindly open this window a little?" I intrupped him.
"The air in here aint so good as it was."

I dont know did this get over, but believe you me I didn't care for that
well washed young wine-seller at all, nor for his company. And it was a
relief when he done as I asked and him and Maison found their seats was
at the other end of the car. In a way I can understand her liking
traveling-men but not up to the point of traveling with one, even by
semi-accident. And so opening the Motion Picture Gazette to look at the
double-page spread of myself "Who has at length been lured by the
artistic possibilities of the picture world," and keeping a eye on Ma to
see would she stop the candy-boy, settled down to the soothing sound of
Maison's laugh, and begun my quiet little trip to Healthland.

There is a large variaty of ladies which have husbands still in the
army, but believe you me they certainly got one thing in common, or
else no looks at all. And that is, the temptation to take up with other
company to some degree. Because of course while the war was holding the
stage a husband's absence could be stood, but what with this
peace-hyphen in the fighting and everything, you cant help but commence
wondering what kind of a girl is detaining him over there and feel
inclined to have a understudy kind of waiting off stage in self defence.
For believe you me, there seems to be something sort of attractive about
a war-widow and the ones which ignores the fact and minds their own
affairs is the real patriotic women of America.

Not that I want to say a word about Maison, and what happened to me
after the end of that train ride on which I was sitting so
superior-minded, taught me a lesson; because its a cinch to be good when
you want to be. A person which has suffered themselves is slow to bawl
out the other fellow so quick next time. Do you get me? Not yet.

Well, after we had rolled by the lovely scenery and read the handsome
ad. signs on either hand, not to mention the pipe-line, and got the
invigorating smell of low tide in our eager nostrils, we come out on
that quiet little country railroad station platform, our destination, to
be greeted by only several hundred busses and a thousand or so
taxi-cabs, each yelling at the top of their voices. As we got off the
train Maison rushes up to us and pipes a cheering little question.

"Where are we going, dearie?" she said, blithly.

"Where are we going?" I says. "Maison Rosabelle, do you mean to say you
didn't wire no place for rooms?"

"Why no!" says Maison. "Didn't you?"

"Certainly not!" I says. "I never wired for rooms in my whole life. The
advance agent always done that for me."

"Well Mary Gilligan, I'm not your advance agent!" she snapped, and then
she kind of looked at Mr. Freddy in a sweet, helpless womanly fashion
expecting him to fork up a little help. But it seems Mr. Freddy was one
of these birds that only think to take care of his own comfort. He had a
room alright at the Traymore. And he meant to keep it!

"We'll take the bus to there," he suggested. "I'm sure there'll be lots
of room."

But no bus for me on account of professional reasons. So we took one
taxi for him and us and another for Musette and the dogs and the bags,
and then commenced a round of seeking for shelter as the poet says,
which had the "Two Orphans" skun a mile. We went to six hotels and not a
room among them. Believe you me, there is just one person can make you
feel cheaper than a Atlantic City hotel clerk when he says "No
reservations?" and lifts his arched brows, and that is the head waiter
when he says "nothing to drink?" and you say "yes, nothing!" Well, thank
Gawd thats one thing prohibition will prohibit.

Well anyways, we tried six hotels until at last we come to a little
place where the young feller at the desk give his reluctant consent to
our admission. It was a simple little place done quitely in red plush
and gold and marble columns, very restful with not over a hundred people
sitting about in the lobby, listning not to the sad sea waves but to a
jazz orchestra and inhaling the nice fresh tobacco smoke of which the
air was full.

Well, Mr. Freddy give a gasp of relief and bid us good-by, after dating
up Maisie for dinner, and a flock of bell-hops hopped upon our stuff
and we commenced a walking tower to our rooms. As we started off down
the Alleyway, Maison give me a nudge.

"Look it, that sweet young officer! Aint he handsome?" she whispers only
just loud enough for him to hear. And before I thought I turned my head
and he certainly was easy to look at. He looked, in fact like a cross
between a clothing ad. and a leading juvinille with a touch of bear-cat
in him to make a regular he-man out of him. He was a captain, although
so young, and had a cute little moustache and had that blue-blooded
air--you know--like a Boston accent even without hearing him speak. And
he was sitting all alone under a big poster advertising a entertainment
for the benefit of blind soldiers or something. Of course I didn't
notice him at all, because I being a perfect lady I dont do them things.
But I couldnt help seeing that he didn't blush at what Maisie said,
although I knew he heard it, but a sort of crinkly expression come up
round his nice blue eyes as if he thought us comic or something. It made
me just boil because my clothes is nothing if not refined and I never
wear anything but a little powder on my nose when off the stage, and if
its one thing gets my goat it is to be taken for a show-girl which
undoubtedly he thought the two of us was and they not in his class, for
even with the passing glance I had taken I could see he was used to the
Vanderbilts and all that set and had never had to be taught to take his
daily tub. Do you get me?

So I walked like I hadnt looked, and of course I really hadnt, and
proceeded to the before the war section of the hotel and the handsome
suite all fitted in real varnished pine and carpets just like a
Rochester boarding house when I was on the small time before I made my
big success, and it made me feel quite at home or would of only for what
I knew the difference in price was going to be. I guessed it just as
soon as I heard Ma gasping over the hotel rules which she was reading. I
went over and looked at them too, and at first I couldn't see nothing
unusual about them. There was the usual bunk about the management not
being responsible for the guest in any way, and Gawd knows how could
they be and I dont blame them. And then, a little ways down I see what
had got Ma stirred up. It seems dogs was ten dollars a week per each,
and of course we had two of them and Ma never has cared for my two,
anyways.

"Well, I hope the sea air will be good for the poor little lambs," she
says very sarcastic. "Mebbe it'll make 'em grow--into police-dogs or
something useful!"

Well I see by this that the salt air had not yet got to Ma, although the
troublesome journey had. And so I put on a simple little suit of English
tweed and low heeled shoes and a walking hat, which seemed to me the
right thing for the country, and went out to pry off a little health
before dinner.

The outdoors was something grand. The air was as good a cocktail as a
person would want, and the lights along the boardwalk was coming out
like dandelion blossoms. There was hardly anybody around--just a few
here and there and the surf of that wide and cruel ocean which Jim was
the other side of, was breaking close to the rail in big white ostrich
plumes. Overhead the sky was as clear and high as a circular drop with
the violet lights on it, and a few clean stars was coming out. It was
just cold enough to make a person want to walk fast until the blood got
singing through you and you wanted to shout and run, only of course no
lady would. But just the same, I commenced to feel glad I hadnt died
when I had the measles, and I loved everybody and had a great career
before me and--and--oh that grand yearning happy feeling which comes out
of being young and full of strength and a good bank-account. Do you get
me? You do!

Well anyways, here I was walking like I had money on it and huming a
tune to myself, when along comes a man the other way, walking two to my
one, and huming the same tune, "How I hate to get up in the morning," it
was. When he heard me and I heard him we both sort of half stopped out
of surprise, and I got a good look at him. It was the young Captain from
the hotel.

He also give a start of surprise when he seen me, showing he recognized
me just as good as I did him. Only it was a real, genuine start, as if
he realized something more than the fact he had seen me at the hotel.
Then he smiled--a smile which would of done any dental ad. proud, and
passed along, looking back over his shoulder--once. While I went along
minding my own business and only know he looked back on account of my
happening to look back to see how far I had gone. I went a mile further
and somehow that smile of his stuck in my mind and made me sort of happy
for no reason, and at the same time awful extra lonesome for Jim. I made
up my mind I would get Jim a new car for a surprise when he come home
and I would send him a extra box of eats this week and some of them
cigarettes he likes so well, and a whole lot of stuff like that, the way
a woman does at such a time. Do you get me? Probably.

Well anyways, I walked myself into a terrible enthusiasm over Jim, and
then come back to the hotel. Which, by the way, its a strange thing how
much further it is coming back to a Atlantic City hotel than walking
away from it. And there at the door was Ma with the two dogs. A real
strange sight for I never knew her to take them out before, and it
looked like a guilty conscience, for she give me a peek out of the
corner of her eye for some reason and then hastily explained how she had
thought she'd take them herself this time instead of Musette. Well, we
got rid of the dogs and then come down to dinner where Maison sailed
down upon us all dressed up and no place to go, for it seems this Mr.
Freddy had stood her up on the dinner, having telephoned he'd be over
later with a friend or two but business prevented him paying for her
meal, or at least thats what I expect he meant. And Maison was wild. But
she had to eat dinner with us, and register a bunch of complaints
between bowing to friends and so forth.

"The luck I have!" she says. "That guy Freddy doesn't think any more of
a nickle than he does of his right arm! And with all the conventions
which is held at this town of course we would have to pick on the date
the Baptist ministers was here! Its a fact! The clerk told me. And what
is more if there ain't Ruby Roselle and Goldringer and will you look at
that wine and it twelve a quart without the tax! Well, of all things!"


III

And there sure enough was Ruby across the room with Goldringer, which he
evidently had come down to wait for the answer to that cable in the
fresh air, and I suppose Ruby was a accident, the same as Freddy, for
goodness knows, I wouldnt say a thing against her even behind her
back--and a good deal could be said behind what shows of it when in
costume. But I wouldnt say it anyhow, because even if it was the truth
that woman would sue a person for liabale if only to get her name in the
paper. And if she happened to be taking dinner with Goldringer, Gawd
knows, its a comparatively free country and he's her manager as well as
mine and its a good thing to assume its only business whenever possible
as thinking the best of people never hurt anybody yet.

Also across the room all by himself was that young Captain, and he
looked over twice but of course I pretended it was the picture on the
wall over his head which had took my eye. Altogether that strange dining
room wasnt much more lonesome to us than the Ritz or Astor for tea would
of been. But the most remarkable part of the meal was Ma. Because she
didn't touch it! Actually, and it the American plan which would tempt
one of these Asthetics if for no other reason but that you have to pay
for it anyway. And all she took was a piece of meat about the size of a
dime and a leaf of salad.

"I'm going to stick by what I said if only because you said I wouldnt!"
she says, looking me square in the eye. "Diet is my middle name."

Well, I mentally give her until to-morrow on that but said nothing at
the time. And we went out into the lounge where Mr. Freddy and three
friends was already lounging and after they had joined us, Goldringer
and Ruby did the same, and the drinks commenced to flow with that
frantic haste like into a river at the edge of the ocean as the poet
says, meaning because its near its finish. While I, never using any
alcohol myself except to remove my make up, sat there flushed with Bevo,
and couldn't help noticing the way the Captain which he was still all
alone, looked over at the menagerie, and it made me boil for how could I
help that piker Freddy and his cheap friends and the rest, and believe
you me there are many perfect ladies in pictures and on the stage, only
the public dont often recognize them because they are swamped with a
bunch of roughnecks which all are popularly supposed to be.

It was a big relief when the Captain got up and went away about nine,
and left us to a endurance contest as to which could sit up the longest
in that refreshing atmosphere of cigarette smoke and drinks and
ten-dollar perfume with the sad sea waves beating vainly outside the
carefully glass enclosed verandah until one o'clock--when I personally
went to bed leaving them to their fate.

I give the telephone operator a terrible shock by leaving a call for
seven thirty, and when it come I put on my riding suit which I had left
from a dance called "The Call to Hounds" which Jim and me done at the
Palace just before he enlisted, and went out into the keen morning air.
And it was some air! Then I commenced to look around for horses but had
great difficulty in finding the same, for it seems the Atlantic City
horses dont get up any earlier than most of the visitors, and believe
you me I and a few coons which were picking up scraps and so forth off
the boardwalk, was the only birds in sight at that hour. Well anyways I
walked along breathing in that sweet air at about fifty cents per breath
by the hotel rates, but feeling pretty good in spite of it, when I
actually found a place where the horses was up--or mabe they had been
all night. I got a horse which looked considerable like a moth-eaten
property one but could go pretty good and commenced to ride gently along
what seemed to be my private ocean, when all of a sudden who would I
see but the young Captain riding very good indeed. He come up to me on
high and then tried to put on the brakes when he seen who it was, but
the horse had its mind on something else and wouldnt, so he got by me
but not without a "Good morning!" Which I thought fairly safe to smile
at seeing we was so rapidly going in opposite directions. But it seems
he must of spoke roughly to his steed for he come up behind me and spoke
with just that grand refined Big-Time drawing-room act accent I knew by
his little moustache he would have.

"I say! What luck!" he says. "You are Miss Marie LaTour, are you not?"

Was I sore? I was. Any lady would be and of course after the company he
seen me in at the hotel what could I expect but to be picked up? But
more particularly as he had my name and it with a good reputation, and
no one can say different with truth, I simply had to show him where he
got off.

"Sir!" I says, just like a play. "Sir! I do not know you. Please beat it
at once!"

"I know, but really!" he begged, flashing that white smile. "I'm not
trying to be impertenant--let me explain...."

"Explain nothing!" I says very haughty. "I wont listen."

"But I'm not doing what you think!" he cries out. "Please wait until you
hear...."

"I've heard that 'please listen' stuff before," I says. "Good-by!"

And then I done the bravest act of my life, not being really acquainted
with horses, especially Atlantic City ones. I give the horse a lash and
off we went, I trying hard to give the impression of a good rider and
not looking back because I dasn't with that animal headed for the steel
pier full clip. But I heard the Captain's remarks, just the same.

"By jove, I'll _make_ you listen to me--just for that!" he says. And I
heard no more, for the bird which keeps the horses come out and rescued
me just before we hit the pier and I got off and started for the hotel,
boiling with rage. Me treated like a common chorus girl! Me, once the
best known parlor dancing act in the world, and now even more so on the
motion picture screen and a lady or dead! I wouldnt of looked at that
guy again on a bet--I made up my mind right then and there to show him
his mistake and that if my accent wasnt as good as his my morals was
better and no attempt on his part could get me to speak to him again.

Well in this state of mind I run into Ma, just before we reached the
hotel which she was hurrying to just ahead of me, and believe you me I
was sure surprised because I never knew her out so early although she
generally is up by seven, but with her curlpapers still on and a kimona
and thats different from coming out in public.

"I've been taking my exercise!" she says before I could speak. "And I'm
glad to see you do the same," she says.

And I certainly had to hand it to her strength of mind because after
being out so early and all she eat was only tea and dry toast for
breakfast.

After which we stopped by the office and just before we got there I see
the Captain give a note to the clerk and walk away. When we asked for
mail that note was the first thing the clerk handed me.

"Captain Raymond just left this for you Miss LaTour," he says.

I didnt even open it.

"Kindly return it," I says, very dignified, giving it back, and looked
over my other mail. But no letter from my husband, which is always the
way on a day a woman most needs one. So I went upstairs very low in my
mind and sort of glad that even if Jim couldn't think to write there was
others would be glad enough to if they was let. And then I went and got
Maison out of bed which she was taking her breakfast in.

"You come down here for your health and look what you do to it!" I says,
and made her go for a boardwalk which she held out for about half a hour
and no wonder with the heels she wears, and then stopped me with a gasp.

"Dearie, you surely must be the one that put the hell in health," she
says, "For heavens sakes leave us sit down."

Well we did, and in about five minutes along comes Mr. Freddy with a
friend, Mr. Sternberg, and it was remarkable how quick Maison recovered
her stren

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