the
madam here. Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as they want,
but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you. If this fairy
story lasts, it'll be your own, Mag--a sort of commission you get on my
take-off of you. But if anything happens to the world--if it should go
crazy, or get sane, and not love Nancy Olden any more, why, here'll be
a place for me, too.

Does it look that way? Divil a bit, you croaker! It looks--it
looks--listen and I'll tell you how it looks.

It looks as though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the three
Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance Olden to play
upon.

It looks as though the audience likes the sound of my voice as much
almost as I do myself; anyway, as much as it does the sight of me.

It looks as though the press, if you please, had discovered a new stage
star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me--me, Nancy
Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity rig, and
in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a
lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty. Fancy, he
didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C., he calls it. And all
the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him
was sketching Nance Olden in different poses. Isn't that the limit?

What d'ye think Tom Dorgan'd say to see half a page of Nancy Olden in
the X-Ray? Wouldn't his eyes pop? Poor old Tom! ... No danger--they
won't let him have the papers.... My old Tommy!

What is it, Mag? Oh, what was I saying? Yes--yes, how it looks.

Well, it looks as though the Trust--yes, the big and mighty T.
T.--short for Theatrical Trust, you innocent--had heard of that same
Nance Olden you read about in the papers. For one night last week,
when I'd just come of and the house was yelling and shouting behind me,
Obermuller meets me in the wings and trots me of to his private office.

"What for?" I asked him on the way.

"You'll find out in a minute. Come on."

I pulled up my stocking and followed. You know I wear it in that act
without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours used to,
Mag. Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so in the habit
of doing it.

A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black
mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in. He grinned at
my make-up, and then at me.

"Clever little girl," he says through hi