The manager seemed looking for her, and she caught an expression of relief in his eyes when he first saw her. He hurried up, greeted her, and bowed with a respect ludicrously at variance with his previous ogre-like behavior. And as he bowed, across his shoulders she saw Charley Welsh deliberately wink.
But the surprise had just begun. The manager begged to be introduced to her sister, chatted entertainingly with the pair of them, and strove greatly and anxiously to be agreeable. He even went so far as to give Edna a dressing room to herself, to the unspeakable envy of the three other amateur ladies of previous acquaintance. Edna was nonplussed, and it was not till she met Charley Welsh in the passage that light was thrown on the mystery.
“Hello!” he greeted her. “On Easy Street, eh? Everything slidin’ your way.”
She smiled brightly.
“Thinks yer a female reporter, sure. I almost split when I saw’m layin’ himself out sweet an’ pleasin’. Honest, now, that ain’t yer graft, is it?”
“I told you my experience with editors,” she parried. “And honest now, it was honest, too.”
But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head dubiously. “Not that I care a rap,” he declared. “And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if yer not, why yer all right anyway. Yer not our class, that’s straight.”
After her turn, which she did this time with the nerve of an old campaigner, the manager returned to the charge; and after saying nice things and being generally nice himself, he came to the point.
“You’ll treat us well, I hope,” he said insinuatingly. “Do the right thing by us, and all that?”
“Oh,” she answered innocently, “you couldn’t persuade me to do another turn; I know I seemed to take and that you’d like to have me, but I really, really can’t.”