there?"

"She was table girl at the Mansion House," says he.

"Which?" says I. "Oh, dish juggler, eh? And now she's on the stage?
Some jump for Nellie! But, honest now, Higgins, you don't mean to
spring one of them mossy 'Way Down East drammers on me as the true
dope? Come now, don't tell me you and she used to go to school
together, and all that!"

No, it wa'n't quite on that line. She was only one of Boothbay's
fairest daughters by adoption, havin' drifted in from some mill
town--Biddeford, I think it was--where a weaver's strike had thrown her
out of a job. She was half Irish and half French-Canadian, and,
accordin' to Ira's description, she was some ornamental.

Anyway, she had the boys all goin' in no time at all. Ira was mealin'
at the Mansion House just then, though; so he was in on the ground
floor from the start. Even at that, how he managed to keep the rail
with so much competition is more'n I can say; but there's something
sort of clean and wholesome lookin' about him, and I expect them calm,
sea-blue eyes helped along. Anyway, him and Nellie kept comp'ny there,
I take it, for three or four months quite steady, and Ira admits that
he was plumb gone on her.

"Well, what was the hitch?" says I. "Wouldn't she be Mrs. Higgins?"

"Guess she would if I had asked her," says he; "but I didn't get around
to it quick enough. Fact is, I'd just bought out the boat shop, and I
had fifteen or twenty men to work for me, with four new keels laid down
at once, and--well, I was mighty rushed with work just then and----"

"I get you," says I. "While you was makin' up your mind what to say,
some wholesale drug drummer with a black mustache won her away."

It's more complicated than that, though. One of the chambermaids had a
cousin who was assistant property man with a Klaw & Erlanger comp'ny,
and he'd sent on the tip how some enterprisin' manager was lookin' for
fifty new faces for a Broadway production; and so, if Cousin Maggie
wanted to shake the hotel business, here was her chance. Maggie wanted
to, all right; but she lacked the nerve to try it alone. Now, if
Nellie would only go along too--why----

And it happens this was one night when Ira had overlooked a date he had
with Nellie, and that while he was doin' overtime at the boatworks
Nellie was waitin' lonesome on the corner all dressed to go over to
South Bristol to a dance. So this bulletin from the great city finds
her in a state of mind.

"