As they started for the door the girl stood up.
“I’ll be there to-morrow, all right,” she called out.
“Over my dead body you will,” came Billy’s voice.
They were out of the door by this time, too late to hear the sound of a blow and too late to see the girl drop to the floor.
They don’t interfere in those kind of family rows in the Tenderloin, or in the Bowery, either.
It isn’t healthy.
It’s etiquette to mind your own business and keep out of the way. And so nobody paid any attention to the weeping girl and the swearing blackguard. But that night in a dingy room a girl cried herself to sleep, and between her tears made up her mind what she would do on the morrow.
She did what she had planned to do, and twenty-four hours later the tough waiter was looking for another girl to take her place.
Between you and me, that happened a long while ago, as we count time in New York. Since then she has been abroad, to the Pacific Coast and in all of the large American cities. Her name is in big type on the posters, and she is referred to as a prima donna.
I wonder if her memory ever takes her back to the little back room where she used to sing songs for a dollar a night?