“Won’t you let me kiss you? I’m in deadly earnest, Morny.”
“If you’re in deadly earnest you shall kiss me. Oh, but not now. You shall kiss me on the back of the ear when it comes to the cue for the kiss in our scene.” And so saying, she ducked her head and bolted down the corridor as fast as she could run.
During the fortnight of rehearsals Eliphalet saw a great deal of Mornice, and they became inseparable friends. She told him her name was really Alice May, but she couldn’t endure Alice, so had achieved Mornice from the deeps of her imagination. She had elected the riper month of June instead of May because it sounded jollier after Mornice. Of her people she scarcely ever spoke. Once, in the course of conversation, she chanced to remark:
“Oh yes, he did a vamoose—like mother.”
“What is a ‘vamoose’?” he asked.
“When you skip off and leave everything to look after itself.”
“And that is what happened with you?”
“Umps! I’ve been on my own since I wore pigtails.”
Eliphalet was silent, thinking of the risks to which this child must have been exposed in her struggle for a living. Intuitively she read his thoughts, and said:
“I can look after myself, though. Don’t you worry!”