I slipped my hand in my pocket and gave a little farewell tap to the contract for $100. I took the pen; I looked hard at him. "There's a heap of trusting being asked for in this contract," I remarked. "You won't forget your promise about doubling the salary?"
"I won't forget anything," he answered.
I looked at the pen, it was a stub, the first I ever saw; then I said: "That's what makes your writing look so villainous. I can't sign with that thing—I'd be ashamed to own my signature in court, when we come to the fight we're very likely to have before we are through with each other."
He groaned at my levity, but got another pen. I wrote Clara Morris twice, shook hands, and went out and back to my home—a Western actress with an engagement in a New York theatre for the coming season.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIRST
John Cockerill and our Eccentric Engagement—I Play a Summer Season at Halifax—Then to New York, and to House-Keeping at Last.
Mr. Worthington passed out of my life after he had done me the service he set out to do. It had been an odd notion to step down from his carriage, as it were, and point out to a girl, struggling along a rough and dusty path, a short cut to the fair broad highway of prosperity; but I thank him heartily, for without his urging voice, his steadily pointing hand, I should have continued plodding along in the dust—heaven knows how long.
One of the few people I came to know well in Cincinnati was John A. Cockerill. At that time he was the city editor on the Enquirer, and my devoted friend. We were both young, poor, energetic, ambitious. We exchanged confidences, plans, hopes, and dreams, and were as happy as possible so long as we were just plain friends, but as soon as sentiment pushed in and an engagement was acknowledged between us, we, as the farmer says:
"Quarrel'd and fit—and scratched and bit—"
For John was jealous of my profession, which made my temper hot, and we were a queer engaged pair. I used to say to him: "It's just a question which one of us suicides first!"