"Not much!" says Millie. "We're as good as any. Maurice ain't got a thing on us, honest; nor that Ripple combination, either. Why, we got steps of our own that the rest haven't thought of!"
"Ye-e-es?" says I.
"Oh, I know," says she, shruggin' her shoulders. "Maybe we don't look it; but, say, we've got the goods."
"Case of undiscovered genius, eh?" says I.
Millie flushes a little at that; but bites her lips to keep back the hot retort. Bright lookin' girl, Millie; and if she hadn't been costumed so vivid she wouldn't have been such a bad looker. But in that tight, striped dress with the slashed skirt, and that foolish lid with the two skimpy pink feathers curlin' over the back—well, believe me, she was some zippy!
"Say, lemme tell you how it happened, won't you?" says she.
"If it ain't too long," says I.
"I'll make it sketchy," says she. "In the first place, when I landed here in New York about a year and a half ago, I'd made up my mind to connect with big money. I didn't know exactly how; the stage, maybe. Anyway, I knew the coin was here, and that it wasn't in Saskatoon."
"Sass—which?" says I.
"Saskatoon," says she. "It's on the map, up in Saskatchewan, you know. No, I wasn't born there. Hardly anybody was. It's too new. I went there with Mother and Brother Phil when the Northwest boom first started. It was all right for Philip. He could do surveying, and then he got to dipping into real estate. But there was no chance for me; so I started for the white lights. While I was looking around here I took on anything that would furnish a meal ticket. Oh, you can't starve Millie! I did fancy ironin' in a hand laundry, was window demonstrator for an electric vibrator concern, did a turn as a dress model, and sold soda checks in a drugstore. They don't load you down on payday in any of them places; but that didn't worry me. I was sizing up the good things, and I'd about decided on the front row of a musical comedy for mine, when what did I have to go and do but get soft on Tim here!"