With a little checked cry, Elizabeth reached out both hands. A plump, pink cheeked young man took them and somewhat diffidently stepped into the little square of room. But Elizabeth clung to him shamelessly and her voice caught when she tried to speak. He was the first link between two years of loneliness and the yesterdays of happy childhood.
“Lou,” came at last, “Lou Seabury!”
“I got a nerve, haven’t I,—walkin’ in on you like this?”
His pink face flushed a deeper pink as she pulled the chair from the dressing-table, thrust him into it, and stood looking down. “You’re just an angel from heaven, that’s what you are! How ever in the world did you find me?”
“I came over here yesterday to look at some threshin’ machines. Scott Brothers are sellin’ out and Dad got [7] ]word they’re lettin’ their stuff go dirt cheap, so he sent me to take a squint. By Jiminy, I almost dropped dead when I went past the theater this afternoon and saw your picture. Maybe I didn’t go right up to the girl in the ticket box and tell her I was an old friend of yours!”
Elizabeth’s tongue went into her cheek. “And what did she say?”
“Asked why I didn’t come in to see you perform to-night and I said I would. But first I made up my mind I’d let you know I was here. Say—what is it you do?”
“Imitations.”
“Who do you imitate?”
“Oh, Ethel Barrymore and Elsie Janis and Eddie Foy and George Cohan and Nazimova—” She reeled off a list, most of them strange to him.