"I shall look a perfect sketch at dinner, see if I don't. Not that it matters a twopenny dash, me not being the bill-topper in any sense in this revue," said England's Premier Comedienne cheerily. "It's the pretty little lady's-maid's charming scena with the young bank manager. Tell me, Smithie——" Here she turned abruptly round and looked at me sharply. "Been thinking over his proposal, have you? Going to take him, are you?"
"I—er——"
"I—er—shouldn't if I was you!"
"You wouldn't?" I said interestedly. "Why not?"
London's Love put down the make-up brush and scanned her own appearance in the glass. Then she got up as if to fetch a frock out of the wardrobe. But she paused, put a small, highly manicured but capable-looking hand on each of my shoulders, and said, holding me so: "You don't like him, Kiddy."
"Oh! But I do! So much!" I protested. "I think Mr. Brace is everything nice ... I think he would make such a splendid husband! He's so steady, and honourable, and sterling, and straight, and kind, and simple-minded, and reliable, and——"
"Ah! Poppycock!" cried the comedienne, with her loud, indulgent laugh. "You're just stringing off a list of aggravating things that a girl might put up with in a man if—if, mind you!—she was head over ears in love with him as well. But, great Pip! Fancy marrying a man for those things!
"Why, what d'you suppose it would be like? I ought to know," she answered herself before I, rather surprised, could say anything. "One of those 'sterling' young men that never gave his mother an hour's anxiety; one of those reliable, simple-minded fellers that you always knew what he was goin' to say an' do next; always came home to tea on the dot, and 'never cared to wander from his own fireside'—that's what I was talked into marryin' by my aunts when I was a kid of eighteen," said Miss Vi Vassity quite bitterly.
"Oh, were you?" I cried, astonished. "I never knew——"
"Yes, that was my first husband. Answered to the name of Bert—Albert. Very good position in the waterworks in our town at home," said London's Love.