"The show went big that night, and the next day some of the critics spoke favorably of it. I don't care what they say, it's a good show, and as the plot has been almost entirely eliminated it should go well here.
"After rehearsing all day Tuesday we were allowed to walk up and down Pennsylvania avenue and get acquainted. I met a gentleman who said he had been introduced to me in New York, and he certainly treated me grand. We went over to the Willard for supper, and he just tossed the menu toward me, careless like, and said, 'Got to it, kid.' Talk about your Southern gallantry! A bunch of these near-sports will rush a girl into a feedshop, and they have no more than got seated at the table before he will commence talking about the big dinner he has just had, so that the poor thing feels like a burglar if she eats anything more than a couple of lobsters. But not this Percival, he frankly admitted that he hadn't had anything to eat for a week and scratched no entries.
"I wish these New Yorkers were that way—nothing personal dear—but they have become so callous to feeding the merry-merry that they have the big eat dodging stunt down to a science. The only way to get more than a two-dollar, including wine, feed out of most of these moss-covered pocketbooks is by blasting.
"Why, I have known certain parties to adopt the subterfuge of going out to telephone and then beating it to avoid paying the check. Thus leaving the poor feedee to pay the bill or wait longingly for a friend to show up on the horizon.
"A gentleman who will pull off a deal like that is not worthy of the confidence of one of our sex. But, understand, I am not by any means damning the whole male sex, for I have met gentlemen who threw the lid of their grouch bag in the gutter and didn't care if they ever found it again. Those is the kind of parties that has my trust. Me grub, and I got money in the bank? Sure I do. I got to keep in training somehow, so if I did lose my inheritance I wouldn't be out of practice.
"Wilbur don't blame me for it. He says that the object in life of an agent and a chorus girl is to plant everything they can get their fins into whenever they can, for it don't last long, and the good people ain't healthy. And goodness knows I sure do need my health. For though I appear to be a strong, robust creature I am a frail woman.
"Wilbur can moan and groan around with a hangover for a couple of days, but I have to be right on the job all the time with this smiling face and laughing eye thing, or he would seek some other place for sympathy. Why, many a morning I have spoke light and happy words of cheer to him over the 'phone with a tongue as thick as a board-walk and the inside of my nob yearning to burst loose and flop around in the cool morning air.
"Do I caper up to the transmitter and sob, 'Oh, darling, I fear me that I am not long for this earth!' Never! I take a long drink of ice water, and when his 'Is this you, kid?' comes over the wire I chirrup back, real bright and gay, 'Right O, Kiddo!' and when he says he don't believe he can live through the day, do I suggest that we die together? Not I! I tell him to forget it and go downstairs and have George mix him up a mug full of the hair of the dog that bit him. That shows the love of a good woman.
"Was you at the Chorus Girls' Ball last Saturday night? My, I would hate to cast any reflections on the judges, but their choice certainly was bum. Still I suppose they are old men and not up on the modern 1908 rules on osculation.
"In their day when a young man imprinted a chaste salute on a dame's alabaster forehead he was supposed to go into a fit of delight, but not according to this year's book. Now they clinch with a strangle hold and stick till one or the other drops from exhaustion. I did not enter the contest, for I am not a chorus girl; I am a show girl, if you please. What's the difference? Five a week.