"Good night, Loo!"
Miss Birdsong brushed at her soft cheeks with the pink tip of a rabbit's foot, and the color sprang out to match the rose-colored sateen facing of her hat. Her lips opened in a faint smile; and after a careful interval she scrambled into her jacket, flung a good-night kiss to the doorman, and hurried through the gloomy foyer.
No sham like the sham of the theater! Its marble façade is classic as a temple, and its dirty gray-brick rear opens out on a cat-infested alley. The perfumes of the auditorium are the fumes of the wings. Thespis wears a custom-made coat of many colors, but his undershirt is sackcloth.
Miss Birdsong stepped out of a gold and mauve hallway, through a grimy side-door, and into an area as black as a pit; and out from its blackest shadows a figure rose to meet her.
"Joe?"
"Yeh; where's Loo and Harry?"
"I dunno; they—they went on."
"Hurry up, Beauty. I ain't so much of a favorite round this theater that I can bask in this sunny spot."
"I didn't mean to keep you waitin' so long, Joe."
"Believe me, you're the foist little girl I ever hung round an usher's exit for."