I believe I told him I’d run away with an orangoutang if I got the chance. Remember, I was only seventeen, and I had never been alone with a man in my life before. In my life—if you call such slavery as that, living! So he told me not to appear to notice him, but to be all ready for him and to watch out, and when I heard a certain whistle he taught me, wherever I was, to jump and run for him, and he’d do the rest.

You can imagine if I wasn’t excited for the next few days! I would have jumped off the roof to get to him, if necessary, and I just waited from hour to hour, expecting to hear his call every minute. I didn’t hardly dare to go to sleep at night for fear I’d miss him, and I was listening everywhere I went, meals and all. I think I trembled for three days. It seemed impossible that he’d be able to get me away; it was too good to come true. But I had nothing else in the world to look forward to, and I hoped and prayed for that whistle with all my might.

One night at the theatre, after my company had done the first part of their bell-ringing, I went on for my song. I remember it was that purple silk frock I wore, the one with the gold fringe, and red stockings with bows at the knees. Well, the orchestra had just struck up my air—

“Ain’t I the cheese? Ain’t I the cheese?

Dancing the serpentine under the trees!”

and I was just ready to catch the first note when I heard that whistle so loud and clear I couldn’t mistake it. Heavens! I can almost hear it now. I was half frightened to death, but I just shut my eyes and jumped clean over the footlights and landed in the flageolet’s lap and then pelted right up the middle aisle. Harry had a lot of his friends ready by the main entrance, and they rushed down to meet me and while half of them held the ushers and the crowd back, for everyone was getting up to see what was the matter, like a panic, the rest of the boys took me by the elbows and ran me out the front door. The house was simply packed that night, and when they all saw me jump they set up a yell like the place was afire. But I didn’t hear it at all till I got out in the corridor with my skirt half torn off and my dancing clogs gone—and then the noise sounded like a lion roaring in a menagerie.

Harry was all ready waiting for me, and he took me right up in his arms, as if I was a doll, ran down the stairs, put me in a carriage waiting at the door, and we drove off, lickety-split.

I’ve often thought since then that I took a big risk in trusting a man I didn’t really know at all, but Harry was square, and took me right down to a justice of the peace. We were married just as I stood, with no slippers and the holes in the heels of my stockings showing. What old Max did, I don’t know, but he must have been a picture for the audience when he saw me fly away like a bird out of a cage. By the time he found out what had happened it was too late to do anything about it, for I was Mrs. Maidslow.

Well, I lived with Harry for a few months, and then he began to drink and wanted me to go on the stage again to support him. The first time he struck me I ran away and came up to San Francisco, and went into specialty work for myself. Harry was kind enough when he was sober; in fact, he was too good-natured to refuse even a drink; that was just what was the matter. He had no backbone, and although he had a sort of romantic way with him that women like he didn’t have the nerve to stay with anything very long.

Now the funny part of the whole thing is this. You’d think that old Max would have been furious, and so he was at first, but afterward he had a terrible falling out with the others in his company—his wife had died—and I guess he wanted to spite them more than he did me. At any rate, just before he died, a year ago, he inherited some money from an uncle in Germany, and what did he do but leave a kind of a legacy to Harry. That is, the old man had a funny idea that wills didn’t hold very well in this country, and he had a great respect for the honor of the army officers. So he left $15,000 in cash with a Colonel Knowlton in trust for Harry Maidslow when he could be found. Harry had a way of changing his name when he felt like it, and old Max didn’t know him very well, anyway, so the only way he could be sure of Colonel Knowlton identifying him was by—well, by a certain mark he had on his body that Max happened to know about. The colonel has been invalided home from the Philippines, and every time he sees me he asks me if I’ve found Harry.