and shut it.

She smiled a little cynically. Would she have refused Rodney's offer of
help, she wondered, if she had known an hour ago, that the two hundred
dollars she'd relied on so confidently to pull her out of this rut and
give her a fresh start whenever she was ready to attempt it, were gone
into the pockets of that fat-faced politician?

CHAPTER XVII

THE END OF THE TOUR

From Dubuque the company made a circuit northward into Wisconsin and
Minnesota, swung around a loop and worked their way south again.
Disaster stalked behind them all the way, casting its lengthening shadow
before for them to walk in. On the very first salary day after Rodney's
newspaper had informed Rose of her true financial situation, the manager
doled out a little money on account to the more exigent members of the
company, and remunerated the others with thanks, a nervous smile, and
the rock-ribbed assurance that they'd get it all next week. The long
jump they'd just taken, and a couple of bad houses (they were all bad,
but the two he spoke of couldn't be called audiences at all, except by
courtesy) had caused a temporary stringency.

Rose saw what the more experienced members of the company were doing,
and knew that she ought to follow their example; keep after the manager
for her money, hound him, appeal to him, invent fictitious needs, and
then not spend a cent except what was absolutely wrung out of her by
necessity, so that when the crash came, she wouldn't be left penniless.
But she lacked the energy to do it. She was going through a passing
phase of that same melancholy acquiescence in the decrees of Fate, which
had been Olga Larson's permanent characteristic until Rose's own fire
and a turn in the tide of fortune had roused her.

One little sequence of events springing directly from Rodney's visit to
Dubuque, contributed largely to this result. The principal actor in it
was Dolly.

Dolly's manner toward her had altered that very morning in Dubuque,
though Rose, in her preoccupation, didn't mark the change for a day or
two afterward. Then she saw that her frail little roommate had stopped
chattering; that she no longer made nervous little excuses for leaving
her, nor invented transparent little fibs to account for absences. She
became, in her absurdly ineffectual little way, surly and defiant. She
took to going about openly with her chorus-man, sharing his seat with
him on the train, letting him carry her bag for her