fter the theatre on the table that invariably
wabbled. Freddy would pretend that the foot of the iron bed was a
trapeze. How they laughed. On freezing nights in Maine or Minnesota,
Florette would let Freddy warm his feet against hers, or she would get
up and spread her coat that looked just like fur over the bed.

When they struck a new town at the beginning of each week Freddy and
Florette would go bumming and see all the sights, whether it was
Niagara Falls or just the new Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. Freddy
would have been sorry for little boys who had to stay in one home all
the time--that is, if he had known anything at all about them. But the
life of the strolling player was all that he had ever known, and he
found it delightful, except for the dreaded intervals of "bookin' the
ac'."

The dream of every vaudevillian is to be booked for fifty-two unbroken
weeks in the year, but few attain such popularity. Florette's seasons
were sometimes long, sometimes short; but there always came the
tedious worrying intervals when managers and agents must be besought
for work. Perhaps she would find that people were tired of her old
tricks, and she would have to rehearse new ones, or interpolate new
songs and gags. Then the new act would be tried out at some obscure
vaudeville house, and if it didn't go the rehearsals and trampings to
agents must begin all over again. Freddy shared the anxieties and
hardships of these times. But the only hardship he really minded was
the loss of Florette, for of course the pretty Miss Le Fay, who was
only nineteen on the agents' books, could not appear on Broadway with
a great big boy like Freddy.

However, the bad times always ended, and Florette and Freddy would set
out gayly once more for Oshkosh or Atlanta, Dallas or Des Moines.
Meals expanded, Florette bought a rhinestone-covered comb, and the two
adventurers indulged in an orgy of chocolate drops. With the optimism
of the actor, they forgot all about the dismal past weeks, and saw the
new tour as never ending.

Freddy felt himself once more a real and important human being with a
place in the sun, not just a child to be shushed by a dingy landlady
while his mother was out looking for a job. He knew that he was as
necessary a part of Florette's act as her make-up box. He believed
himself to be as necessary a part of her life as the heart in her
breast, for Florette lavished all her beauty, all her sweetness on
him. No Johns for F