"Me!" said the green-gold blonde, and laughed not prettily. "I ain't a
woman. I'm a queen of burlesque.

"Burlesque? You mean one of those--" Emma McChesney stopped, her
usually deft tongue floundering.

"One of those 'men only' troupes? You guessed it. I'm Blanche LeHaye,
of the Sam Levin Crackerjack Belles. We get into North Bend at six to-
morrow morning, and we play there to-morrow night, Sunday." She took a
step forward so that her haggard face and artificially tinted hair
were very near Emma McChesney. "Know what I was thinkin' just one
second before you come out here?"

"No; what?"

"I was thinkin' what a cinch it would be to just push aside that
canvas thing there by the steps and try what the newspaper accounts
call 'jumping into the night.' Say, if I'd had on my other lawnjerie
I'll bet I'd have done it."

Into Emma McChesney's understanding heart there swept a wave of pity.
But she answered lightly: "Is that supposed to be funny?"

The plump blonde yawned. "It depends on your funny bone. Mine's got
blunted. I'm the lady that the Irish comedy guy slaps in the face with
a bunch of lettuce. Say, there's something about you that makes a
person get gabby and tell things. You'd make a swell clairvoyant."

Beneath the comedy of the bleached hair, and the flaccid face, and the
bizarre wrapper; behind the coarseness and vulgarity and ignorance,