“You’re right. At that age, too! Fast little cat. She wants a spanking. And if she was a kid o’ mine she’d get it.”
“How old is she?”
“Fourteen, they say.”
“Lord, she’ll be a corker in a year or two’s time.”
“Year or two’s time. Hot stuff now if you ask me.”
Perhaps she was. But she had saved the situation. She had averted a panic. She had saved the loss of life inseparable from a theatre stampede. And she knew it. As the audience settled down to be amused by her, or by the next turn for whom she had prepared the way, she gave the conductor the cue for the coda, and, with a final stamp of those inspired feet, she leapt into the wings, where the rest of the Casinos awaited her. She was gasping, with drawn face. Two light blue stockings, robbed of their garters, were slipping half-way down her delicately rounded legs. The dust from the stage had gathered on her warm arms. She was plainly “all gone.” But there was a light in her eye and that in her manner that shrieked: “What did I tell you?”
The manager came to meet her.
“You glorious kid!”
Pertly she looked up at him.
“Yes, ain’t I? Going to push a boat out for me?”