"Oh I say, don't be so absurd!" he says smilingly.
"I'm not!" I says.
"Oh but you are!" he insisted. "Just sit still and let me show you something!"
Well, there was nothing for me but to give in or look a utter fool, and he was so attractive! And, well anyways, I waited and he brought out a letter from his overcoat pocket and it was the very one he had wrote me first and I had returned it to the hotel clerk.
"Please just open it!" he begged, and I did and nearly fainted because inside was a letter in Jim's handwriting addressed to me and introducing Captain Charles Raymond who was with him in France, only being gassed was now home on leave and would I show him every courtesy as he had been good to my ever loving husband, Jim!
"And really and truly I wouldn't have been so persistant, Miss LaTour," Captain Raymond was saying as I looked up. "I had intended using it when I got to New York of course. But when they put me in charge of this entertainment for the benefit of the blind, and I discovered you were here, I was simply determined to get you to take part in it. Couldn't you do us just one little dance? It would be such a drawing-card, your name would. That was all I wanted, really!"
Believe you me I didn't know what to think or how I felt. Did I feel flat? I did! Did I feel relieved? I did!! So it wasnt a mash at all, and for a moment I felt a lonelier war-widow than ever. Then I remembered how Jim said in the note to be nice to this bird, and I could see, now that I looked at him good, that he was the sort which it is perfectly safe to be nice to. Not that he didnt admire me, either, but that he was just as refined as me and more so and was Jim's pal beside. So I says yes, of course I would dance, and we talked and talked and the sun went down, and got to be real friends and was it good to hear about Jim, first hand? IT WAS! And after a while we commenced to walk back toward the hotel, pushing the chair, and the lights was all lit along the walk like Fairyland, and also in the shops so they was more like show-cases than ever. And then I got the second shock of the afternoon because at ten past six with dinner at seven, there was Ma in the Ocean Lunch eating griddle-cakes, fish-balls, Salsbury steake and coffee, with a little strained honey and apple-pie on the side! No wonder she could diet so good! And I take it to my credit that, since she did not notice me, I never let on that I seen her, not then nor afterward at dinner when she refused everything but two dill pickles!
But it wasn't until afterward when I was in the star dressing-room at the Apollo Theatre, putting on my make-up for the benefit that the real blow came. I was just about ready to go on when in rushed Goldringer, all breathless with a cablegram in his hand.
"Its all right about Olivette Twist!" he puffed at me. "We'll begin making that fillum Tuesday!" and he threw the message down on my dressing table. It was signed by our London manager and it read:—
"Present location of Charles Dickens uncertain but material is uncopyrighted, shoot."