in your mind. You can't think of one without the other. Now, Lillian
Russell and cold cream is one; and new potatoes and brown crocks is
another."

[Illustration: "'Now, Lillian Russell and cold cream is one; and new
potatoes and brown crocks is another'"]

She peeled potatoes, sitting hunched up on the kitchen chair with her
high heels caught back of the top rung. She chopped spinach until her
face was scarlet, and her hair hung in limp strands at the back of her
neck. She skinned tomatoes. She scoured pans. She wiped up the white
oilcloth table-top with a capable and soapy hand. The heat and bustle
of the little kitchen seemed to work some miraculous change in her.
Her eyes brightened. Her lips smiled. Once, Emma McChesney and Ethel
Morrissey exchanged covert looks when they heard her crooning one of
those tuneless chants that women hum when they wring out dishcloths in
soapy water.

After dinner, in the cool of the sitting-room, with the shades drawn,
and their skirts tucked halfway to their knees, things looked
propitious for that first stroke in the plan which had worked itself
out in Emma McChesney's alert mind. She caught Blanche LeHaye's eye,
and smiled.

"This beats burlesquing, doesn't it?" she said. She leaned forward a
bit in her chair. "Tell me, Miss LeHaye, haven't you ever thought of
quitting that--the stage--and turning to something--something--"

"Something decent?" Blanche LeHaye finished for her. "I used to. I've
got over that. Now all I ask is to get a laugh when I kick the