d of the price----"

"That's my affair," he answered curtly, then added, more kindly,
"Good-night! you have behaved well, Miss Morris, and if I can give you a
pleasure--I shall be glad."

And next day I owned the tiniest dog in New York, who slept in a
collar-box, by my pillow, that I might not hurt it in the night. Whose
bark was like a cambric needle, and who, within five minutes after her
arrival, challenged to deadly combat my beloved Bertie, who weighed good
four pounds.

CHAPTER FORTY-SECOND

I am Engaged to Star part of the Season--Mr. Daly Breaks his
Contract--I Leave him and under Threat of Injunction--I meet Mr. Palmer
and make Contract and appear at the Union Square in the "Wicked World."

The third season in New York was drawing to its close, and by most
desperate struggling I had managed just to keep my head above water--that
was all. I not only failed to get ahead by so much as a single dollar,
but I had never had really enough of anything. We were skimped on
clothes, skimped on food, indeed we were skimped on everything, except
work and hope deferred. When, lo! a starring tour was proposed to me.
After my first fright was over I saw a possibility of earning in that way
something more than my mere board, though, truth to tell, I was not
enraptured with the prospect of joining that ever-moving caravan of
homeless wanderers, who barter home, happiness, and digestive apparatus
for their percentage of the gross, and the doubtful privilege of having
their own three-sheet posters stare them out of countenance in every town
they visit. Yet without the brazen poster and an occasional lithograph
hung upside down in the window of a German beer saloon, one would lack
the proof of stardom.

No, I had watched stars too long and too closely to believe theirs was a
very joyous existence; besides, I felt I had much to learn yet, and that
New York was the place to learn it in; so, true to my promise, off I went
and laid the matter before Mr. Daly--and he _did_ take on, but for such
an odd reason. For though he paid me the valued compliment of saying he
could not afford to lose me, his greatest anger was aroused by what he
called the "demoralization" my act would bring into his company.

"You put that bee in their bonnets and its buzzing will drown all
commands, threats, or reasons. Every mother's son and daughter of them
will demand the right to star! Why, confound it! Jimmie Lewis, who has
had one tr