clerk in Siegel's
store. She has got the room right next to me, and say, she is awful
sick. I have been setting up nights with her till I am dippy for want of
sleep. I think she is all in. I didn't let her know it, but I have sent
for her mother. I snooped around her place the other night till I found
her mother's address, and I wrote her a letter telling her just how
Jenny was, and that some one orter come and get her. Jenny would kill me
if she knew it, cause she don't want her folks to know what she is
doing, but it seems too bad to have her die here alone in a rotten
little room on 28th Street when she has got a mother, who, no matter
what she has done, would be glad to see her. Say what you will Kate,
girls that have got mothers have a darned sight better chance than
girls like you and me who was brought up on the street, and when she
gets sick and lonely, no matter how tough she has been, if she can reach
out her hand and touch her mother, she can sort of begin over again.

I have been learning a lot of the new dances, and Fred Stillman and me
took the prize the other night for the best hesitation waltz. I am going
to try to get a job dancing in one of the restaurants. I am tired
working like a dog in these cheap theatres, and I know I can dance as
well as any girl on Broadway. A crowd of us blew in the other night at
that big dance hall at 59th Street, and everybody stopped to watch me
and Fred. It kinda makes you feel good to know you can do anything well,
if it is only tangoing, and I do love it! When I get a good partner it
seems to me I hear voices calling, and the music ain't made just by some
niggers in the corner, but it is just something speaking to me and
something inside of me answers and I forget I am in a hall with a lot
of people looking at me, I am just a dancing by myself to the things I
hear. Jim says you have fixed it with a guard so as you can get all the
letters you want. I can't slip you over twenty dollars a month to save
my soul. That orter be able to fix him enough, but if it ain't, let me
know, cause you know Kate, you can have every dollar I make except just
enough to keep the kid a going, if it will make things easier for you.
Get me out a letter whenever you can. Remember I am always thinking of
you.

_Nan_.

III

_Dear Kate_:

I told you, didn't I, of sending for Jenny Kerns' mother. Well, she come
and she was just the kind you read about in story books. The moment I