bought each other a beer.  What do you think of that?  Well, anyway the mob got together after the performance and decided to celebrate the event in fitting and proper style by getting soused, and Alla kindly donated her new flat.  Yes, the Judge caught a sleeper on Wall Street and she was in strong with the cop on the beat and the people on the floor below her had moved on account of the noise.  Selfish people.  They didn’t want to do anything all night but sleep, and Alla complained that they were wearing out the steam pipe by pounding on it.

“After the show the whole outfit cleaned all the makeup off except behind the ears and took it on the lope for Alla’s domicile.  Me being the guest of honor, I naturally kicked in late.  Gee! everybody of any importance was there, even some of the principals, and every other show in town sent at least one representative.  Say, the drum was so crowded that some of the couples had to turn the fire escape into a conservatory.  They would crawl out there and bombard the neighborhood with empty bottles, until the cop on the corner would rap and then for some two or three minutes the block would be as silent as a tomb.

“Wilbur of course was there in his official capacity as press agent, to not only add tone to the gathering, but to make sure that it reached the night desk of all the papers, for if these society guys get a column and a half they ought to be willing to slip us poor chorus dolls a couple of sticks and keep it from under police news.

“I was there to see that Wilbur did not, under the influence of the charming company, make any remarks that might be misconstrued by any of the assembled gathering as a declaration of love.  For them dolls are always on the job and the only time they don’t catch a live one is when their hands are tied.  Jealous?  What!  Me?  Not so you can notice it, but I ain’t going to have anybody have anything on me, and while I caused no scenes, I left the impression that I had Wilbur trained so that he would roll over and play dead at the word of command.  While these ’keep off the grass’ signs don’t do much good, still they run a horrible bluff.  Did Wilbur get wise to this move on my part?  Not on your life!  If he found out that I was, figuratively speaking, riding herd on him, he would get chesty and all swelled up until it would be my painful duty to lance him.  I don’t know yet whether Wilbur is a rhinestone Billie or a Whisky amber Billie with a dash of bitters Billie, but I am On the Job Betty, all right, all right.

“Well, to get back to the beefsteak.  After all the guests had assembled, which was maybe some 2 a.m., they started in.  It was merely the ordinary stunt of beer and beefsteak and beefsteak and beer, but the hours were enlivened by the vaudeville performances of the guests.  This was before the precinct sergeant knocked on the door.  One old frump that must have been tramming a mace in the Roman Hanging Gardens got a yen that was doing imitations she had Elsie Janis and Gertrude Hoffman looking like a couple of false starts.  Another took the hooks out of her marsel wave and did that time-worn stunt of ‘Laska.’  Then one of the chorus men gave an imitation of George Cohan, as usual.  But that don’t explain the scratches; does it?