“There are little confidences us girls exchange in the privacy of our boudoirs that would never do for the ear of a man.  She tried to get a job as one of those six-foot girls in ‘The Love Waltz,’ but the manager told her she had better go with a circus.  She naturally queried ‘Why?’ And he, the rude thing, told her she could get a job as a quarter-pole.  That’s why she could never get a job with the Held show.  She was all right in low neck, but when it came to tights!  Well, you know bowlegs never did appeal to the front row.

“Mind you, I wouldn’t say a thing that would hurt her character the least bit, but you should have seen the way she carried on when she was out in Chicago.  You know that anyone who runs around with those La Salle street spendthrifts loses class, anyway, and she just tore around that North Side something scandalous, and till my dying day I never will forget the scene she and the comedian’s wife had on the platform in that dear Peoria.

“Alla, bless her heart, she is a good soul, is a flighty creature and she accepted the attentions of the comedian which his wife was not supposed to be jerry to.  But one day some gabby girl put wifey next.  We were all down to the station waiting for the train to come in when up romps wifey to this doll, who is making the big talk with a chorus man—­just shows you what extent she will go for company—­she was talking to this chorus man and wifey capers up to her and says:  ’You been flirting with my husband, haven’t you?’ And hauling off wifey hangs one on Alla’s map that is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.  Bing goes Alla to the platform down and out.  She was in such a trance that we had to rub her hands and borrow a drink from the press agent, who came back with the show to see if he couldn’t get his salary, before she would come to.  Pale, why that girl was so white that her number eighteen looked like big gobs of red paint on each cheek.

“I never saw a girl so surprised in my life.  For the nonce she was nonplussed.  She didn’t know what to make of it.  When she did you should have heard the language she used.  It is not for me to tell it in a respectable crowd, for I only use it to Estelle, that’s my maid, when she pulls my hair, but it was certainly not fit for publication in a family newspaper.

“She’s continually getting into trouble.  If it ain’t one thing it’s another.  It’s a wonder to me she hasn’t been pinched oftener than she has.

“I never will forget one time she was out riding with a handsome gentleman from Pittsburg in a cab and while leaning on his shoulder his diamond scarfpin got caught in her teeth.  She being a bashful young thing—­then.  Well, when she takes her head off his shoulder the pin naturally comes along, too, and then she got afraid that he would think she was trying to nick it so she stuck the pin in her hat band, intending to restore it on the way home.  But in the next cafe they stopped in she picked a fight and left him in a huff.  Would you believe it, that guy had the nerve to come around the next day and declare that she had pinched the bauble and threaten to land her in the booby hatch if she didn’t come across.