r gave his mother an hour's
anxiety; one of those reliable, simple-minded fellers that you always
knew what he was goin' to say an' do next; always came home to tea on
the dot, and 'never cared to wander from his own fireside'--that's what
I was talked into marryin' by my aunts when I was a kid of eighteen,"
said Miss Vi Vassity quite bitterly.

"Oh, were you?" I cried, astonished. "I never knew----"

"Yes, that was my first husband. Answered to the name of Bert--Albert.
Very good position in the waterworks in our town at home," said London's
Love.

"A real good husband he was. Lor', how he did used to aggravate me! It's
a good many years ago, Smithie, and I've almost forgotten what he looked
like. I can just call to mind the way he used to snuffle when he had a
cold in the head; shocking colds he used to catch, but he would always
get up and light the kitchen fire to get me an early cup o' tea, no
matter what the weather was. That I will say for him. The man I
remember, though--he was pretty different!"

There was a silence in the countrified-looking bedroom that the
music-hall artiste had filled with the atmosphere of a theatrical
dressing-room. Then England's Premier Comedienne went on in a softer,
more diffident voice than I had ever heard from her.

"He was the young man that jilted Vi Vassity a good deal later on. A
trick cyclist he was.... Small, but beautifully built fellow, supple as
a cat. Bad-tempered as a cat, too! And shifty, and mean in little ways!
A cruel little devil, too, but----"

She sighed.

"I fair doted on him!" concluded the Star simply. "Much I cared what
sort of a rotter he was! It's the way a woman's got to feel about a man
once in a lifetime. If she doesn't, she's been done out of the best
that's going."

"But," I suggested, "she misses a good deal of pain?"

"Yes, and of everything else. Nothing else is worth it, Smithie. You
can't understand what it was to me just the way his hair grew," said the
comedienne who'd loved the trick cyclist. "Cropped close, of course, and
black. Looked as if a handful of soot had been rubbed over his head. But
soft as velvet to your lips. I used to tell him that. Never a one for
talking much himself. He'd a trick of speaking almost as if he grudged
you the words; curious, and shy, and my word! wasn't it fascinatin'?
Then he'd give a little laugh in the middle of a sentence sometimes.
That used to go to my heart, straight as a pebble into a pool. Ye