"I thought of course it was a benefit we would give," put in Pattie in a voice which just plain dismissed every other possibility. "I have a new patter to 'Yankee Doodle' with a red, white and blue spot on me, at front center with the rest of the house dark. It ought to go big about the center of the programme."
After which modest little suggestion she sunk gracefully back into her seat and commenced shadow-tapping the tune with her feet under the committee table.
"Well, benefits is always possible," I said, "and of course we could have it with admission by W.S.S. only. But it's been done a lot and three days ain't so very much time in which to get it up in a way which would do your act justice," I says.
"Ah! cheries!" says Mlle. DuChamp. "Mes petites!" she says, whatever that was. "I have zee gran' idea—perfect! I will make zee speach on zee steps of zee Library of zee Public at Forty-Second Street and Feeth Avenoo. I will arise, I will stretch my han', I will call out 'Cityonnes! 'Urry up queek! Your countree call you—Formez vos battillions!' and while I make zee dramatic appeal zee ozzers can collect twenty-five t'ousand dollar from zee breathless crowd!"
She had got up on her box-toed shoes and was making the grandest gestures you ever see. Honest to Gawd I do believe that girl has herself kidded into believing that the Paris she was born in was France, not Ind. I kind of waved at her, and when she had flopped back into her place, completely overcome by her emotions, I suggested that maybe the Library wasn't as Public as it looked, being generally occupied of a fine afternoon by wounded soldiers making the same line of talk, and of course Mlle. DuChamps would be more chic and all that, but would she be let?
"Of course she wouldn't!" says Ruby, coming out of her vanity-case for a minute. "Of course not! My idea is that we all chip in say about seven thousand five hundred and let it go at that!"
Somehow this cheap-Jack way of getting out of doing any work by spending a little money, got my goat something fierce. Besides which it was Ruby's idea of patriotism and all against W.S.S. rules and everything, but for the minute I was so floored I couldn't speak. The dark Dahlia did it for me, though, and much more contained than I could of at the time.
"That's mighty generous, Miss Roselle," she says just as sweet, "only you see me and Blondie has each got our thousand dollars worth and one person can't get more," she says.
"Well, I'll take a thousand dollars worth then," said Ruby, and I could see very plain that the matter was finished in her mind, and what would you expect different after them patriotic tights of hers?
"I'll take a thousand also," put in Madame Broun. "To tell the right truth I haven't a one. What do you do with them—stick them on the backs of letters like Tuberculosis, or Merry Xmas?"