CHAPTER FOUR
"I've got Adversity laying on her back and purring with Contentment," remarked Sabrina the Show Girl, as she stepped out of a taxicab in front of a cafe, "and I guess she'll stand hitched for a few minutes. Tell my driver to wait and then come in and have a little liquid nourishment. This is the only place I can find where one can get any kind of service. My, ain't I getting fussy? Here 'two weeks ago coffee and butter-cakes were a banquet. But why dig up the past, and I reiterate the remark, 'Let the dead bury its dead.' If anybody mentions Mink's to me I am liable to throw a foaming fit and fall in it. Every time I pass a bread line I am filled with sorrow for the poor unfortunates, while heretofore I got sore because they had beaten me to it.
"Sure, the lawyer guy kicked in with the balance of the ten thousand, and I am now busily engaged in putting it where it will do the most good. Moved? Well, I should hope so, dear. Instead of existing in a two-by-four hallroom, with an airshaft exposure, where you have to open the door to think, I am now residing in a real suite. Maybe you think I don't keep Estelle—that's my maid—on the job. She's the busy proposition about that dump. As soon as I come out of my beauty sleep in the morning I ring the bell and in capers Estelle with a dipperful of chocolate, which I sip while reclining on my couch, and you can take it from me it's got this stunt of romping about a cold room in a canton flannel kimona trifling with the affections of a gas stove beat to a purple pulp.
"Then after reading the morning paper I arise, take a bawth, and Estelle does my hair. That is, she does part of it. I can't bear any one's teeth but my own on my Dutch braid. You know some people are sensitive that a-way. After the hair dressing number I inhale about $4 worth of breakfast and then lounge about my little nest. I call it my little nest because it is finished in birdseye maple. I always have eggs for breakfast, and Estelle puts on the finishing touches with a feather duster and I boss the job, smoking a cigarette. I always was strong for having things harmonize. I suppose it is my artistic temperament. I always drink cordials the same color as my hat. After that everything is fixed to my entire satisfaction, and I won't stand for cigarette butts being kicked under the bed, either. I'm that particular. Then about noon the dressmaker makes her entrance and I pick out my gowns. Clothes! Say, when I line out of here for that dear Emporia I'll have to buy twenty-five tickets so as I can get a baggage car free. I'll need it. From the apparel I am purchasing you'd think I was wardrobe mistress for a number two 'Talk of New York' company. If I don't make those canned goods drummers in front of the Palace Hotel think there is something in town besides a 'Tom' show I hope I never see Broadway again.
"Then along toward afternoon I climb into some chic frock—get that?—and taxey down here to look things over. Say, maybe you don't think this butterfly existence is all to the berries. The other evening I kicked down to a show I once worked in and, believe me, if some of those dames knew what they looked like from the front they certainly would rush out and hide in the cow lot.
"Honest, there is one doll who thinks she has got every prize beauty in the country biting her finger nails with jealousy. Well, she came out, led out at that. I nearly dropped dead in my seat. You know that I am not a knocker, and there is nothing I hate worse than to hear one lady pan another behind her back, so I will merely make this statement. If this person would stop trying to use up all the number 18 in the block, would get operated on for knock-knees, have her face changed and stop trying to be a very dear friend to the whole bald-headed department during the opening chorus, she'd be all right and might get a job with a medicine show. I know how she keeps her job all right, all right. I ain't mentioning any names, but a certain party, old enough to be her grandfather, had to put money into the show before they would even let her have her voice tried. I was out to dinner with the same crowd that she was with the other evening. Arthur and I were sitting at the table in the restaurant waiting for the rest of the crowd when in she canters, dressed up regardless like a queen in a book, in a low-neck gag. She run a bluff as if she just had it made, but if a certain K. & E. wardrobe mistress ever catches her with it on this party is due to get pinched for petty larceny. As soon as she spotted me she rushed over and yelped, 'Oh, Sabrina, I'm charmed to see you.' And kissed me—the cat. Then she said, 'Dearie, I understand you have inherited a fortune.' And raised her eyebrows just like that. Now I had been kidded enough about that legacy of mine, and when that doll, that ain't such a muchness herself, commences to hand out inferences, I naturally lost my goat, but remembering that I am now a lady I let go of my hatpin and merely remarked, 'Yes, but I came by it honestly, and I can safely say that I am no Foxy Grandpa's fair-haired child.'
"That terse remark made her sit up and take notice, for she had been telling one of the members of the party who she was trying to make a hit with that she got her money from her large estates in England. The only thing she knows about England she learned at a Burton Holmes lecture that she got into on a ticket she found in the subway.
"The gentlemen of the party called time and we sat down to the table. She started putting on airs and telling what she knew about the Thaw trial, so to let her know that I was right there I passed out this one, 'It's a cinch if anybody did any shooting to save your life he'll get the chair the first throw out of the box, and the jury won't be out any longer than it takes to get their hats, either.' Say, if she had had a gun she'd have shot me. One of the gentlemen remarked to me, 'You don't care for this young lady, do you?' I said, 'Sure, I like her. I like her about as much as Bingham likes Jerome.'
"This female party started to drinking champagne as if it were suds, so naturally it wasn't long before she got a snootful, and one of these crying kind, all the party began to kid her until at last she sobbed, 'Well, there is always one place I can go to where I am welcome.' One of the guys said, 'Yes, dearie, I know it, but it is after 1 o'clock now and that place is closed.' Then little Bright Eyes beat it and we all had a real nice evening after that. Oh! She's a smooth one, all right; she nearly made me lose my job once if it hadn't been that the stage manager was carrying my suitcase I would have been decorated with my little two weeks out in the wilds somewhere. You see it was this way: We had a tree, not the one Arthur owned, but another, and one of the comedians had to stand inside of it for about fifteen minutes before he could make his entrance—laughing number—this was only a dinky little place and only had one small airhole. Well, this foxy dame stuffed this airhole full of limberger cheese, so when it came time for his entrance instead of coming forth blithe and gay as per book, the comedian came out looking as if he had apoplexy, the same naturally causing the merry-merry to giggle ad lib. Did you ever see a wild fish? Honest, when that man came off I thought he was going to commit murder; what he said on the subject is not for me to repeat. Right in the middle of the harangue this dame remarks, 'I think it was Sabrina.'
"The next think she thunk was to wonder who let go of the asbestos curtain, for I happened to overhear that 'aside' and bounced a stage-brace on her think tank. If she had gone on again that night it would have been in a wheeled chair. Another stunt she did was to put lampblack all over the tenor's glove and he wiped it off on the prima's shoulders so she looked like a zebra in a bathing suit, and every time she would tell the firemen when the chorus men were getting fresh courage by smoking cigarettes in their dressing rooms, but that is all over now and my stage career is ended until I spend all this surplus cash. I take it on the run for that dear Kansas tomorrow, so I think I will go and see if Estelle has finished packing. Try and be good while I am gone, and if anything happens for goodness sake wire me, for out in that neck of the woods even paying for telegrams from New York is a pleasure. Au revoir."
In which Sabrina makes a visit to her parents in Emporia, returns after but a brief stay and chronicles some of the events that transpired while in the city of her birth.