When the other guests had taken their leave, and Dell was at last alone, she slipped into a kimono and rang the call-bell. A few minutes later she heard the sound of footsteps in the hall.
“Ice-water boy!” she muttered thirstily, and flung open the door. “Oh,” she cried, “it’s Clara!”
Clara burst forth without a preface.
“I never should have known her, Dell! Why, she’s so thin, haggard, sort of, but that isn’t it. Jean was so different, somehow. Wait till I get these hat-pins out.”
After she had seated herself she was silent for a moment. Then she seized Dell’s hand.
“Dell, it’s funny, but really it seemed to me as if Jean were—why, she was even greater than she was that wonderful night in Milwaukee with Norman.”
Dell brought her back to realities. “But what did she say?”
“Why, I only had time for a word. I said, ‘Why, Jean!’ She had a little bowl of water, and she said, ‘Oh, Clara, please don’t talk to me now! I’m awfully busy. Come in some other time, won’t you?’ And before I knew it, she was gone.”
For another hour the two girls discussed Jean Caspian and a way to help her. The result of their planning was that the next morning Dell appeared at Clara’s room with a triumphantly extended hand.
“Eighty-eight dollars! Well, they can say what they choose about actors, but when it comes to practical generosity, they’re there, right down to the last little girl in the chorus. Look here! Forty dollars from English Toppling! And we used to call him a tight-wad.”