"Yure right fut is crazy,
Yure left fut is lazy,
But if ye'll be aisy
I'll teach ye to waltz!"

After which them two old cut-ups wink at each other rakish and slap
their knees. All of which ain't so illuminatin'. But they keep on,
mentionin' Koster Bial's and the Cork Room, until I can patch together
quite a sketch of Mrs. Tupper's early career.

Seems she'd made her first hit in this old-time concert-hall when she
was a sweet young thing in her teens. One of her naughty stunts was
kickin' her slipper into an upper box, and gettin' it tossed back with a
mash note in it, or maybe a twenty-dollar bill. Then she'd graduated
into comic opera.

"Was there ever a Katishaw like her?" demands Old Hickory of K. W., who
responds by hummin' husky:

"I dote upon a tiger
From the Congo or the Niger,
Especially when lashing of his tail."

And, while they don't go into details, I gathered that they'd been Clara
Belle fans--had sent her orchids on openin' nights, and maybe had set up
wine suppers for her and her friends. They knew about a couple of her
matrimonial splurges. One was with her manager, of course; the next was
a young broker whose fam'ly got him to break it off. After that they'd
lost track of her.

"It seems to me," says Old Hickory, "that I heard she had married
someone in Buffalo, or Rochester, and had quit the stage. A patent
medicine chap, I think he was, who'd made a lot of money out of
something or other. I wonder what has become of her?"

That was my cue, all right, but I passes it up. I wasn't talkin' just
then; I was listenin'.

"Ah-h-h!" goes on Mr. Mason, foldin' his hands over his forward sponson
and rollin' his eyes sentimental. "Dear Clara Belle! I say, Ellins,
wouldn't you like to hear her sing that MacFadden song once more?"

"I'd give fifty dollars," says Old Hickory.

"I'd make it a hundred if she'd follow it with 'O Promise Me,'" says K.
W. "What was her record--six hundred nights on Broadway, wasn't it?"

Say, they went on reminiscin' so long, it's a wonder the monthly meetin'
ever got started at all. I might have forgot them hot-air bids of
theirs, too, if it hadn't been for something Vee announces that night
across the dinner-table.

Seems that Mrs. Robert Ellins had been rung into managin' one of these
war benefit stunts, and she's decided to use