n on the bed, she
went on: "Every place I look for a position something interferes. It's
almost as if I were blacklisted. I know I could get jobs all right, if
I wanted to pay the price, but I won't. I just want to tell you, I
won't. No!"

Nervous and restless, she again rose, and, going to the fireplace,
rested her elbow on the mantel. The advance agent coughed and nodded
his head approvingly.

"That's the way to talk," he said. "I don't know you very well, but
I've watched you close. I'm just a common, ordinary showman, who never
had much money, and I'm going out o' date. I've spent most of my time
with nigger minstrel shows and circuses, but I've been on the square.
That's why I'm broke." Rather sadly he added: "Once I thought the
missis would have to go back and do her acrobatic act, but she couldn't
do that, she's grown so deuced fat." Rising and going up to Laura, he
said: "Just you don't mind. It'll all come out right."

"It's an awful tough game, isn't it?" she said, averting her face.

She wiped away the tears that were silently coursing down her wan
cheeks. Then, going to the table, she took up the glass, poured the
unused milk back in the bottle, and replaced the biscuits in the
wardrobe.

"Tough!" exclaimed the agent. "It's hell forty ways from the Jack. It's
tough for me, but for a pretty woman with a lot o' rich fools jumping
out o' their automobiles and hanging around stage doors, it must be
something awful. I ain't blaming the women. They say 'self-preservation
is the first law of nature,' and I guess that's right; but sometimes
when the show is over and I see them fellows with their hair plastered
back, smoking cigarettes in a holder long enough to reach from here to
Harlem, and a bank-roll that would bust my pocket and turn my head, I
feel as if I'd like to get a gun and go a-shooting around this old
town."

"Jim!" protested Laura.

"Yes, I do," he insisted hotly; "you bet!"

"That wouldn't pay, would it?"

"No; they're not worth the job of sitting on that throne in Sing Sing,
and I'm too poor to go to Matteawan. But all them fellows under
nineteen and over fifty-nine ain't much use to themselves or any one
else."

"Perhaps all of them are not so bad," said Laura meditatively.

"Yes, they are," he insisted angrily; "angels and all. Last season I
had one of them shows where a rich fellow backed it on account of a
girl. We lost money and he lost his girl; then we got stuck in Texas. I
tel