“To go back sometime, there was a certain skirt that I used to room with in Chicago when we were both broke, but one night she went out with a bunch of siss-boom-ah! boys and came home with a large and juicy snoot full and spent the early morning hours in leaning out of the window of the apartment and whistling through her fingers to the milkmen, as well as staging a disrobing number in the middle of the room with the curtains up to such an extent that the inhabitants of the outlying districts had to wait sometime for their morning milk.

“This, naturally grated on my refined sensibilities, so the next morning while she was yet beating the hay, I packed my little suitcase and took it on the run away from there, leaving her, you might say, on the pan.  I went into the pony ballet of a La Salle Theatre show—­can you see me as a pony?—­and I heard that she was advancing Art with a stock burlesque in South Chicago.  That evening she was among those present at the aforementioned social function.  And while we kissed and embraced each other with the affection of long lost sisters, still I could detect above the odor of cocktails an underlying current of soreness.  So we clinched, but I took particular pains to see that we went clean in the breakaway.

“A young gentleman from Pittsburg was one of the guests and this creature naturally put herself forward to make him have a real nice time and, while I am true to Wilbur, still I think it my duty to be kind to every one.  This Chicago party got the hunch that I was trying to beat her to this Pittsburg wop and she managed to get him in a corner and I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was making a strenuous effort to reveal some of my past, and, while I have never done anything that would cast a breath of suspicion on my spotless character, still I knew that this party would not hesitate for a minute to do some romancing, so I naturally edged over toward that particular corner as if I was not noticing myself do it, and overheard her inform the gent, that while I had the outward appearance of an innocent young babe, I was a viper at heart, and had beat it out of Chicago with some ten or twelve thousand dollars’ worth of her personal jewelry.

“Shucks!  All the jewelry she ever had was a diamond stickpin she bit out of a gentleman’s scarf when they were going home in a cab, and all she had left of that was the pawn ticket.

“Naturally hearing the libelous remarks, I was compelled to defend myself, so I quietly interrupted her conversation by remarking lightly over her shoulder, ’Ah!  I see, Laura, that you are still a member of the Arm and Hammer band, and I wish to mention in passing that the only ten or twelve thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry you ever had you returned to the property man every night after the ballroom scene.’

“As for me eloping with your belongings all you ever had was a dirty handkerchief kimona, a Fluffy Ruffles skirt and a near-seal jacket, and you had to throw a chill when you entered a cafe so as not to have to take that off.  If you had you would have been disgraced for life.”