When we had seated ourselves and the waiter had retired for the second time she began: 

“You have been hearing me put up a plaintive plea about being on the rocks.  Well, I was.  I had everything in hock but my self-respect, and I had that ready to tuck under my shawl at a moment’s notice and rush off to Uncle Sim’s.  But never again for muh.  I was up in my suite wondering if I could sign checks at Child’s when the landlady shoved a letter under my door—­she could have shoved a dog under just as well as not.  I dive for the epistle, thinking, perhaps, it is some word of encouragement from Matt Grau.  I tear open the envelope and pull out a letter and out drops a piece of paper that could look like it meant money.  It’s a cinch I beat it to the floor.  It was a check.  I staggered against the gas stove I was so surprised; then I unfolded it and it was made out to me.  Can you beat that?  To me, and in my real name, for one hundred, count ’em, one hundred cold, hard Clearing House certificates.  The only thing that kept me from having a scene with myself was the fact that I had drank up all my merry Yuletide gifts.  Well, by and by, after piping off the check, counting it, biting it, smelling it, I had sense enough to look at the letter.  This is going to be a long, sad tale, so you had better—­yes, that’s it—­a little more of the same.  You see, it was this way.

“Last season when I—­thank goodness—­when I was with a Broadway production instead of a road show, a certain party, whom I had met while out on the one-night stands the season before, came stampeding into town and it fell upon my fair young shoulders to show him the sights.  Query—­Did I show him the sights?  Answer—­Yes, I did show him the sights.  If there was any place we didn’t see it was because you had to have an introduction to get in.

“Then Edward became inoculated with an idea that it would be a good plan to consume all the booze on Broadway, thereby preventing others from living intemperate lives.  Such a chance.  You know the new tunnel couldn’t hold the reserve supply of liquids that can report for duty at a minute’s notice on the corner of Forty-second and Broadway.  The first time I got hep to those proceedings was when I received the glad tidings over the phone from a hospital steward that a friend of mine was trying to bite holes in the detention sheet and shrieking my name.

“I grabbed a book on ‘Pink Animals I Have Met’ and flew to the rescue.  When I got to the cot there was Edward’s cherubic mug peeping out from under about four miles of nice clean bandages and an attendant sitting daintily on his chest.  When he saw me he calmed down and dismissed the menagerie for the nonce.  ‘Dearie,’ he said, taking my shrinking little hand in his, ’it was awful.  It’s only by mere chance that you find me custodian of this Reptile Bazar instead of one of these “mangled remains” things.  It was this way.  I had been down to the bar lapping up a few drinks and pretty soon a band comes up the street.  I go out to look it over and there is nothing in sight, so I go back and get Arthur to mix me up another to see if it won’t make me feel better.  I drink that and hear the band again.  I run out just in time to see it hiding behind the post.  It’s bum harmony at that, so I go upstairs to take a nap.