As we approached her she waved her hand joyfully and exclaimed, ’Welcome bri’ Springtime.  Wel-come to our country village.  You—­you behold in me the only living survivor of the wreck of the Hesperus.  Parade ri’ up, and give the waiter your hat, coat and vest and bevy in.  Though I have just given nineteen dollars’ worth of hair puffs away as sou-sou-ven—­you say it, I feel like a new born child.  Once again I am care fre’ and heart fre’.  Tra la la la le.  I have just decorated Wilbur with the sacred order of the bee and I—­hurray! hurray!—­am no longer a near-bride.  Take it fr’m muh I feel so happy I don’ care if I get spots all over the fron’ of my waist.  I feel like a lark.  Yes shur, a bottled-in-bond lark.  Whatever that ish.  An’ I still got the engagemen’ ring at that.

“Waiter!  Waiter!  Garsong!  Thish gentleman has a few words to shay to you, an’ don’ take no for an answer.  Oh, yes, you arch your eyebrows in sus-sus-picioning and shay that I have been two-stepping around the juniper bowl and I will answer, ‘Right O!’ Just like that.

“I make it a rule to cel’brate all suspicious occasions by revelry and goo’ cheer.  Oh, won’ I have a head in the morning!  But now.

“Behold I appear as Columbine!  I toil not neither do I spin.  Listen, my dear.  The last two days have been fraught—­whatever that is—­with incidences that would bring gray hairs to the head of much stronger women than I.

“It came off last night.  I was out to supper with a couple of gentlemen—­Wilbur and an-another gent.  We were so busy talking things over that I didn’t get to the theater until the middle of the first act.  My, I never saw a man so peevish as that stage manager.  I had no more than exchanged the courtesies of the day with the stage doorkeeper and asked after his sick child than that mut-faced sneeze that calls himself a stage manager had the nerve to rush up an fine me five dollars.  Wha’da you think of that?

“I told him that I positively refused to appear the rest of the evening.  Then he told me that I was fired?  What do you know about that?  I said, calm and dignified, like the perfec’ lady I am, ‘All ri’, you can do as you please with your old show, I don’t care, I don’t care, nothing bothers me,’ and with those kind words I caper up to the dressing room and take that expensive gown I wear in the third act and stuck it in the wash bowl and turned on the water.  It needed cleaning anyway.  Then I put a few things that oughta belong to me in my makeup box and beat it.

“I had to kiss everybody in the company goo’ bye and that made the stage wait and the manager came chasing around without any goat and tol’ me never to darken his door again.  That’s all ri’ with muh.  His blooming door was dark enough anyway.  Then I waltz back to where Wilbur and the gentleman are and break the news.  Wilbur gets sore, for since I commenced wearing those pink tights he doped out a great dramatic career for me.  And naturally he was vexed.  For he saw no show of being able to lay off work.