Who’s the guy that said “Love laughs at locksmiths?” Just show him to muh.  I’ll show him where he got in wrong.  It’s enough to get a perfect lady’s goat.  My Wilbur tried it the night he got pinched, and all he got was a clout on the knob from the desk sergeant and a languishing number in a prison, and I don’t dare to go within a mile of the drum.

The way I caper from one tribulation to another would make a sick woman out of far stronger than me.  Yes, I have at last found a man that loves me for myself alone.  He’s a press agent, and he hands it out so sincere that I know he must mean part of it.  He’s going to buy me an engagement ring as soon as he gets his expense account.  He’s with a Broadway musical comedy, and though he has run some of the girls’ pictures, he has not made the slightest advance toward any of them.

He’s been coming to see me for nearly a month.  My heart went out to him the minute he said he had a stand in with three city editors.

Us actresses never get over our theatrical training.  He’s a quiet party, and instead of hanging about the Knickerbocker bar with the rest of the agents, he stays in the office and pounds out copy.  He gave me a beautiful silk parasol that I know didn’t cost him less than four pairs of seats.  And all this before he asked me for my hand in marriage.

Honest, I’ll never forget the night he proposed as long as I live.  Not that I never was proposed to before, and some of them would have had me starred, but the romantic surroundings and all that kind of thing.  It was this way:  Me and him were the guests at a beefsteak party, and after the fourth drink he commenced to show me marked attention, and when we got out of the cab in front of my hotel he offered to help me upstairs, though I generally have a bellboy for that purpose, and when we had got up in my apartment and Estelle had gone to give the bellhop a quarter and the pitcher, he popped the question, and such beautiful language, I remembered it the next morning and wrote it down.

He held my shrinking little hand in his and said, “Say, Kid, you’ve made an awful good showing with me.  Believe it, I could plant your stuff all the rest of my life, and while I ain’t much of a litho myself, still I can get away with it and am the man who invented red on yellow.  I can’t pay for many electric signs for you, but still if you’ll plant your heart in my cut-trunk I’ll guarantee there won’t be any excess and I’m making money enough to O.K. most of your extras.

“Listen, Party, we’ll split my salary fifty-fifty every Saturday night.  I got good backing in the bank, and I want you to be my little star.  You angel!”

Wasn’t that sweet?  That word angel aroused my suspicions for the nonce, for angels are the ones who generally get lanced, but he handed it out so fervent that I knew he would make good on some of the points, so from force of habit I said, “Bring out your contract.”