"Well, this thing will be an ad for you, besides,--if the papers
can be got to notice it. They're coy with their notices, confound
them, since Tausig let them know that big Trust ads don't appear
in the same papers that boom anti-Trust shows!"

"How long are you going to stand it, Mr. O?"

"Just as long as I can't help myself; not a minute longer."

"There ought to be a way--some way--"

"Yes, there ought, but there isn't. They've got things down to a
fine point, and the fellow they don't fear has got to fear them.
. . . I'll put your number early to-night, so that you can get
off by nine. Good luck, Nance."

At nine, then, behold Nancy Olden in her white muslin dress,
long-sleeved and high-necked, and just to her shoe-tops, with a
big white muslin sash around her waist. Oh, she's no baby, is
Nance, but she looks like one in this rig with her short hair--or
rather, like a school-girl; which makes the stunts she does in
mimicking the corkers of the profession all the more surprising.

"We're just a little party," said Mrs. Paul Gates, coming into
the bedroom where I was taking of my wraps. "And I'm so glad you
could come, for my principal guest, Mr. Latimer, is an invalid,
who used to love the theaters, but hasn't been to one since his
attack many years ago. I count on your giving him, in a way, a
condensed history in action of what is going on on the stage."