"I guess you think I'm a bad one, don't you? Well, maybe I am. But I'm
not the worst. I've got a brother. He lives out West, and he's rich,
and married, and respectable. You know the way a man can climb out of
the mud, while a woman just can't wade out of it? Well, that's the way
it was with us. His wife's a regular society bug. She wouldn't admit
that there was any such truck as me, unless, maybe, the Municipal
Protective League, or something, of her town, got to waging a war
against burlesque shows. I hadn't seen Len--that's my brother---in
years and years. Then one night in Omaha, I glimmed him sitting down
in the B. H. row. His face just seemed to rise up at me out of the
audience. He recognized me, too. Say, men are all alike. What they see
in a dingy, half-fed, ignorant bunch like us, I don't know. But the
minute a man goes to Cleveland, or Pittsburgh, or somewhere on
business he'll hunt up a burlesque show, and what's more, he'll enjoy
it. Funny. Well, Len waited for me after the show, and we had a talk.
He told me his troubles, and I told him some of mine, and when we got
through I wouldn't have swapped with him. His wife's a wonder. She's
climbed to the top of the ladder in her town. And she's pretty, and
young-looking, and a regular swell. Len says their home is one of the
kind where the rubberneck auto stops while the spieler tells the crowd
who lives there, and how he made his money. But they haven't any kids,
Len told me. He's crazy about 'em. But his wife don't want any. I wish
you could have seen Len's face when he was talking about it."

She dropped the gingham apron in a circle at her feet, and stepped out
of it. She walked over to where her own clothes lay in a gaudy heap.

"Exit the gingham. But it's been great." She paused before slipping
her skirt over her head. The silence of the other two women seemed to