“Gee, I wish I had your sand, Lizzie! To break away—and make good.”
She turned swiftly to the mirror, picked up the discarded puff, dabbed some powder on her nose, then carefully rouged her nostrils. And if a tear smudged into the shadow under her eye, he didn’t notice it.
He watched her fascinated, every move, every practiced touch to her make-up. She had unpinned the towel and her hair fluffed like a golden brown halo round her small, mobile face. And catching his rapt expression in the mirror, it flashed over her that to him she did represent success. The mere fact that she had broken the chains of New England tradition, that she had crossed the rubicon of the footlights, put her on a plane apart.
Somehow the look in his nice eyes, of wonder, of envy, of homage—the look she had so often worn when from a fifty cent seat in the gallery she had studied the methods of the stars she impersonated—gave her new courage. To-night
she would not go through her ten minutes listlessly with just one idea uppermost—to get her theater trunk packed in a rush so that she might snatch a few hours’ sleep before making the train in the dull gray dawn. To-night she would be sure at least of an audience of one, of interest and enthusiasm and a thrill of [9] ]excitement—and these she would merit. She would do her turn for Lou Seabury in a way he’d never forget.
She drew a stool from under the dressing-table, sat down and plied him with hurried questions about the folks at home. He gave her the latest news, little intimate bits that mean nothing but are so dear to one who knows no fireside but the battered washstand and cracked basin of a third-rate hotel room.
Grand’pa Terwilliger, seventy-nine, was keeping company with the widow Bonser but was scared to marry her for fear folks would talk. Grace Perkins had a new baby. Stanley Perkins had married a stenographer in Boston and bought a flivver. He, Lou, had bought a victrola for fifteen dollars second-hand and had some crackerjack opera records for it. She ought to hear them!
When finally she sent him round to the front of the house and hurried down the ugly iron steps, her low-heeled white slippers touched them with an eager lightness they had not known for months.
The curtain was rung down on a one-act sketch. A placard announced “Miss Betty Parsons—in her Famous Imitations.”
With a dazzling smile, Elizabeth sallied forth, cane in hand singing, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.”