And, Mag, you try—if you're me—to fit Tom Dorgan in here—Tom Dorgan in stripes and savage sulks still—all these months—kept away from the world, even the world behind bars! Maggie, don't you wish Tom was a ventriloquist or—or an acrobat or—but this isn't what I had to tell you.
Do you know what a society entertainer is, Miss Monahan? No? Well, look at me. Yes, I'm one. Miss Nance Olden, whose services are worth fifty dollars a night—at least, they were one night.
Ginger brought me the note that made me a society entertainer. It was from a Mrs. Paul B. Gates, who had been "charmed by your clever impersonations, Miss Olden, and write to know if you have the leisure to entertain some friends at my house on Thursday of this week."
Had I the leisure—well, rather! I showed the note to Gray, just to make her jealous. (Oh, yes, she goes on all right in the act with Lord Harold every night. Catch her letting me wear those things of hers twice!) Well, she just turned up her nose.
"Of course, you won't accept?" she said.
"Of course, I will."
"Oh! I only thought you'd feel as I should about appearing before a lot of snobs, who'll treat you like a servant and—"
"Who'll do nothing of the sort and who'll pay you well for it," put in Obermuller. He had come up and was reading the note I had handed to him. "You just say yes, Nance," he went on, after Gray had bounced of to her dressing-room. "It isn't such a bad graft and—and this is just between us two, mind—that little beggar, Tausig, has begun his tricks since you turned his offer down. They can make things hot for me, and if they do, it won't be so bad for you to go in for this sort of thing—unless you go over to the Trust—"
I shook my head.
"Well, this thing will be an ad for you, besides,—if the papers can be got to notice it. They're coy with their notices, confound them, since Tausig let them know that big Trust ads don't appear in the same papers that boom anti-Trust shows!"