I could get the music publishers to slip me a little on the side for using their songs, too.  Of course I don’t need the money, for I’ve got the biggest part of that ten thou. inheritance left yet; but still it would keep me busy and away from the cafes, for now all I do all day long is to roam around from one place to another imbibing booze and balloon juice.

It’s beautiful billiards all right for the time being, but I always feel so on the blink the next morning.

Wilbur doesn’t care; that is, he said he knew I had artistic temperament, and if I wanted to get it out of my system, vaudeville was as good as anything.

I was talking to a guy the other day that is in vaudeville, and he said that down around the St. James Building you could buy acts by the pound.

Another guy wanted to take my money and star me in a musical comedy.  Wasn’t he the kind gent?

Gee, I didn’t tell you how Wilbur come to get pinched, did I?  Well, it was this way: 

You know Wilbur is of Spanish descent even though he was born in Canarsie, and he has a very jealous disposition; so the night after I had promised to be his own little star of hope he discovered me in a certain cafe with another party.  This other party was a dramatic critic and I was touting Wilbur’s show, but Wilbur didn’t know that, so when he saw me sitting there having the time of my young life he lost his nanny and caused a scene, forgetting this other party was a critic in his passion.

The head waiter threw them both out, and the critic, seeing the police coming, said:  “This is an actor trying to lick me,” and naturally the cops nearly beat poor Wilbur to a pulp.

I went down to the station house and tried to get Wilbur out, but the police were so rude that I had to tell them where to get off, and they threatened to jug me, so I slid.

Wilbur got out the next day, though, and told me over the ’phone that he loved me all the more for trying to come to his rescue.  I wish they would import the Emporia police force here.  I can lick him myself.

My! is it that late?  Wilbur will be waiting to take me over to Childs’.  So long!

Sabrina returns to the chorus so that she can keep an apartment, a maid and an automobile without causing comment.  She also talks of getting a house-boat for the summer with some girl friends and discourses on the advisability of having the wardrobe mistress for a chaperone.

CHAPTER NINE

“Virtue has its own reward and that’s all it ever gets,” remarked Sabrina, the Show Girl, as we met her on the street.  “I am once again a wage-earner.  This floating around town as one of the idle rich is all to the peaches for a while, but as a continuous performance it makes a poor showing.  You know when I first became an heiress I had a call-board put up in my boudoir and a little notice pinned on it that read, ’Rehearsal, 10 o’clock to-morrow, everybody,’ and then I would lay in bed all morning and make faces at it.