funny present. Do you remember
Jenny who was sick about a year ago, and whose mother come from Iowa or
Kansas or somewhere to get her? Well, I got a package the other day
about the size of a house and when I opened it there was a bed quilt in
it made of little pieces of colored calico set around with white pieces.
Jenny's mother wrote me a beautiful letter saying she made it herself
for me out of pieces of cloth she had saved from her family's dresses. I
put it on the bed, and gee, it was the funniest looking thing you ever
saw. It didn't seem to belong to 28th Street anymore than the old lady
did. It was funny to watch the girls when they come into the room. Them
who had been born on the sidewalks like me whooped when they saw it, and
made a lot of fun of it, but the girls who had come from the country
looked at it different and a sort of change come over their faces. One
girl who is in the chorus at the Columbia, set down by the bed and run
her hand up and down the cover and then put her head on it and cried,
and Mary Crosby who comes somewhere from Pennsylvania and has only been
in the quarter about three months, looked at it straight for about five
minutes without speaking and then turned and left the room. I followed
her out into the hall and said, "What is the matter, Mary?" And she said
in a queer choked way, "Good-bye, Nan, me for that little room down in
old P-a. I've got enough." And I'll be darned if she didn't go home.

It was nice to see you, Kate, and you are looking real well. You have
got the only soft snap there, but I can trust you for getting anything
that is laying around easy. I am off to work, going to try a new dance
on to-night.

_Nan_.

XVI

_Dear Kate_:

I opened your trunk and got out the clothes you wrote about. I give the
grey dress to Mary, and the coat to Mrs. Keenan. There are a lot of
things that you won't be able to use when you come out. Hadn't I better
give them to some one? It seems a shame to have them laying there no use
to any body.

I had a dandy day yesterday. Mildred Carter met me in a shop and we
spent the whole day together. You know she is married. Married some
swell man and lives in a fine place on Riverside Drive. She is just as
pretty as ever. No wonder she was in all the Broadway shows. She hasn't
a bit of sense, but her tiny figure has the most perfect curves, and her
face and eyes are just like a wondering child. She makes me think of
Billy. She has