s must have guided her
hand for the choosing of this. Sure, I'd be feeling like a king's
daughter if I wasn't so weak and heartsick. I feel more like a young
gosling that some one has coaxed out of its shell a day too soon. Is
it the effect of Billy Burgeman, I wonder, or the left-overs from the
City Hospital, or an overdose of foolishness--or hunger, just?"

"Miss St. Regis" dined in her own room, and she dined like a king's
daughter, with an appetite whetted by weeks of convalescing, charity
fare. Even the possible appearance at any minute of her original self
offered no terrors for her in the presence of such a soul-satisfying,
hunger-appeasing feast.

* * * * *

At nine-thirty that evening, when the manager sent the hall-boy to
call her, she looked every inch the king's daughter she had dined.
The hall-boy, accustomed to "creations," gave her a frank stare of
admiration, which Patsy noted out of the tail of her eye.

She was ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint
of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head,
ending in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of
her ears; little gold shoes twinkled in and out of the clinging green
as she walked.

"Faith! I feel like a whiff of Old Ireland herself," was Patsy
O'Connell's subconscious comment as "Miss St. Regis" crossed the
stage; and something of the feeling must have been wafted across the
footlights to the audience, for it drew in its breath with a little
gasp of genuine appreciation.

She heard it and was grateful for the few seconds it gave her to look
at the program the manager had handed her as she was entering. It had
never occurred to her that Miss St. Regis might arrange her program
beforehand, that the audience might be expecting something definite
and desired in the form of entertainment. It took all the control of
a well-ordered Irish head to keep her from bolting for the little
stage door after one glance at the paper. Her eye had caught the
impersonation of two American actresses she had never seen, the
reading of a Hawaiian love poem she had never heard of, and scenes
from two plays she had never read. It was all too deliciously,
absurdly horrible for words; and then Patsy O'Connell geared up her
wits, as any true kinswoman of Dan's should.

In a flash there came back to her what the company had done once
when they were playing one-night stands and the wrong s