And to Nance"s untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that she made evoked a storm from the director.
Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from the wings.
"Here"s a howdy-do!" he exclaimed. "Flossy Pierson"s sprained her ankle."
"Ze leetle bear?" shrieked Pulatki; then he clutched his hair in both hands and raved maledictions on the absent Flossy.
"See here," said Reeser, "this is no time for fireworks. Who in the devil is to take her place?"
"Zere is none," wailed Pulatki. "She make her own part. I cannot teach it."
"It"s not the part that bothers me," said Reeser. "It"s the costume.
We"ve got to take whoever will fit it. Who"s the smallest girl in the chorus?"
The eyes of the two men swept the double column of girls until they rested on the one head that, despite its high coiffure, failed to achieve the average height.
"Come here!" called Reeser to Nance.
"But, no!" protested the director, throwing up his hands. "She is impossible. A cork on ze water! A leaf in ze wind! I cannot teach her. I vill not try!"
"It"s too late to get anybody else for to-night," said Reeser, impatiently. "Let her walk through the part, and we"ll see what can be done in the morning." Then seeing Nance"s indignant eyes on the director, he added with a comical twist of his big mouth, "Want to be a bear?"
"Sure!" said Nance, with spirit, "if the Dago can"t teach me to dance, maybe he can teach me to growl."
The joke was lost upon the director, but it put Reeser into such a good humor that he sent her down to the dressing-room to try on the costume.
Ten minutes later, a little bear, awkward but ecstatic, scrambled madly up the steps, and an excited voice called out:
"Look, Mr. Reeser, it fits! it fits!"
For the rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls in a t.i.tter of amus.e.m.e.nt over her surrept.i.tious imitation of the irascible Pulatki.
When the rehearsal was over there was much good-natured hustling and raillery as the girls changed into their street costumes. At Birdie"s invitation Nance went with her to the rooming-house around the corner, where you had to ring a bell to get in, a convention which in itself spelt elegance, and up one flight, two flights, three flights of carpeted steps to a front-hall bedroom on the fourth floor.
"Gee, it"s a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a chair into an open trunk. "There"s a bag of rolls around here some place.
We can make some tea over the gas."
Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration.
Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large, framed photograph.
"That"s my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh, "recognize him?"
"It"s Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you ever get his picture?"
"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn"t laid eyes on him for a couple of years "til I ran across him in New York about a month ago."
"Where"d you see him?"
"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and maybe we didn"t have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college for it when he went back."
"Where"s he now?"
"Here in town. Liable to blow in any minute. If he does, you don"t want to let on you ever saw him before. He won"t remember you if you don"t remind him. He never thinks of anybody twice."
Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel.
She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, and he had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder.
That was a smile that remembered!
"You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued, "there ain"t any use airing it around where you live, or what you been doing. There ain"t a girl in the chorus knows my real name, or where I come from."
The allusion to home stirred Nance"s conscience, and reminded her that over there beyond the cathedral spire, dimly visible from the window, lay a certain little alley which still had claims upon her.
"I ain"t said a thing to "em at home about this," she said. "Suppose they don"t let me do it?"
"Let nothing!" said Birdie. "Write a note to Mrs. Snawdor, and tell her you are spending the night down-town with me. You"ll know by morning whether Reeser is going to take you on or not. If he does, you just want to announce the fact that you are going, and go."
Nance looked at her with kindling eyes. This high-handed method appealed to her. After all wasn"t she past eighteen? Birdie hadn"t been that old when she struck out for herself.
"What about Miss Bobinet?" she asked ruefully.
"The wiggy old party up in Cemetery Street? Let her go hang. You"ve swallowed her frizzes long enough."
Nance laughed and gave the older girl"s arm a rapturous squeeze. "And you think maybe Mr. Reeser"ll take me on?" she asked for the sixteenth time.
"Well, Flossie Pierson has been shipped home, and they"ve got to put somebody in her place. It"s no cinch to pick up a girl on the road, just the right size, who can dance even as good as you can. If Reeser engages you, it"s fifteen per for the rest of the season, and a good chance for next."
"All right, here goes!" cried Nance, recklessly, seizing paper and pen.
When the hard rolls and strong tea which composed their lunch had been disposed of, Nance curled herself luxuriously on the foot of the bed and munched chocolate creams, while Birdie, in a soiled pink kimono that displayed her round white arms and shapely throat, lay stretched beside her. They found a great deal to talk about, and still more to laugh about. Nance loved to laugh; all she wanted was an excuse, and everything was an excuse to-day; Birdie"s tales of stage-door Johnnies, the recent ire of old Spagetti, her own imitation of Miss Bobinet and the ossified Susan. Nance loved the cozy intimacy of the little room; even the heavy odor of perfumes and cosmetics was strange and fascinating; she thought Birdie was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. A thrilling vista of days like this, spent with her in strange and wonderful cities, opened before her.
"I"ll rig you up in some of my clothes, until you get your first pay,"
Birdie offered, "then we can fit you out right and proper. You got the making of an awful pretty girl in you."
Nance shrieked her derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie"s generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first and second finger.
Nance had been initiated into smoking and chewing tobacco before she was ten, but neither appealed to her. Watching Birdie smoke, she had a sudden desire to try it again.
"Give us a puff, Birdie," she said.
Birdie tossed the box over and looked at her wrist-watch.
"We ought to be fixing something for you to wear to-night," she said. "Like as not Mac and Monte "ll turn up and ask us to go somewhere for supper."
"Who is Monte?" asked Nance with breathless interest.
"He"s a fat-headed swell Mac runs with. Spends dollars like nickels. No rarebit and beer for him; it"s champagne and caviar every time. You cotton to him, Nance; he"ll give you anything you want."
"I don"t want him to give me anything," said Nance stoutly. "Time I"m earning fifteen dollars a week, I"ll be making presents myself."