only star performer.
"That stunt keeps them at heel all the time and so busy trying to keep
track of you that they don't have time to look for any other dame. So
that it works both ways for the dealer, and a couple of tears will
always copper any wrong play you make.
"This Beatrice Fairfax dope may be all right in the simple country
maiden, but it don't go in the show business worth a whoop. You've got
to be on your toes in this game and play no steady system.
"My, how I run on! Here I will be late for rehearsal and will have to
give the stage manager an excuse and he will fall for it until some time
I have got good reason for being late, and then he will call me.
"Say, is it considered au fait for a bride-about-to-be to do a little
plugging for wedding presents this early in the game? Well, so long."
Sabrina in this chapter attends a beefsteak party and becomes
involved in an argument with a certain party who was formerly
her roommate but whom she left quietly and by night.
CHAPTER TEN
"Don't I look like a tea store chromo?" inquired Sabrina as Estelle, her
maid, opened the door. "Oh, such a time I had! Never again will I go to
see that Alla McSweeney. Pipe my dial! Get onto the scratch! There are
some wounds that even powder cannot hide. It all started this way. The
girls down at Wilbur's show decided to give a beefsteak in honor of the
prima donna getting the can. Believe me, if they had let a hanging piece
fall on her she would have got but half what was coming to her. Cat!
Well, I should say so, dear. She spoiled the whole effect of that 'I'd
Rather Be a Lemon Than a Quince' number just because she wouldn't let
the pony girls share the spot in the picture. Honest, she caused more
troubles than Louis Nethersole's English actors ever imagined they had.
"I met her socially several times, and she certainly was perfectly
lovely to me. But when she got back on the stage, why, she even had the
stagehands stepping sideways, and you know them. And the manager
couldn't call his soul his own until he had loaded her into a cab and on
her way. Wilbur told me that while on the road that between watching the
panners in the box offices and keeping her from throwing a fit on the
stage he got gray-headed. As for her maid, I can only say, 'Help that
poor creature.' One time the maid pinched her foot while buttoning her
shoe and what does the prima donna do but bounce her whole makeup box on
the
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