“This female party started to drinking champagne as if it were suds, so naturally it wasn’t long before she got a snootful, and one of these crying kind, all the party began to kid her until at last she sobbed, ‘Well, there is always one place I can go to where I am welcome.’  One of the guys said, ’Yes, dearie, I know it, but it is after 1 o’clock now and that place is closed.’  Then little Bright Eyes beat it and we all had a real nice evening after that.  Oh!  She’s a smooth one, all right; she nearly made me lose my job once if it hadn’t been that the stage manager was carrying my suitcase I would have been decorated with my little two weeks out in the wilds somewhere.  You see it was this way:  We had a tree, not the one Arthur owned, but another, and one of the comedians had to stand inside of it for about fifteen minutes before he could make his entrance—­laughing number—­this was only a dinky little place and only had one small airhole.  Well, this foxy dame stuffed this airhole full of limberger cheese, so when it came time for his entrance instead of coming forth blithe and gay as per book, the comedian came out looking as if he had apoplexy, the same naturally causing the merry-merry to giggle ad lib.  Did you ever see a wild fish?  Honest, when that man came off I thought he was going to commit murder; what he said on the subject is not for me to repeat.  Right in the middle of the harangue this dame remarks, ‘I think it was Sabrina.’

“The next think she thunk was to wonder who let go of the asbestos curtain, for I happened to overhear that ‘aside’ and bounced a stage-brace on her think tank.  If she had gone on again that night it would have been in a wheeled chair.  Another stunt she did was to put lampblack all over the tenor’s glove and he wiped it off on the prima’s shoulders so she looked like a zebra in a bathing suit, and every time she would tell the firemen when the chorus men were getting fresh courage by smoking cigarettes in their dressing rooms, but that is all over now and my stage career is ended until I spend all this surplus cash.  I take it on the run for that dear Kansas tomorrow, so I think I will go and see if Estelle has finished packing.  Try and be good while I am gone, and if anything happens for goodness sake wire me, for out in that neck of the woods even paying for telegrams from New York is a pleasure.  Au revoir.”

    In which Sabrina makes a visit to her parents in Emporia,
    returns after but a brief stay and chronicles some of the events
    that transpired while in the city of her birth.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Kill the prodigal, the calf has returned!” cried Sabrina the Show Girl, as her taxicab drew up to where we were standing.

“Thought you were in Emporia!” we exclaimed in surprise.