While I studied these exhibits my hostess had not been silent upon the merits of her little actress friend.  Slowly she made me curious as to the origin and inner life of this valued member of an exalted profession.

“Yes, sir; there she is at the top, drawing down big money, with a nice vine-clad home in this film town, furnished from a page in a woman’s magazine, with a big black limousine like a hearse—­all but the plumes—­and a husband that she worships the ground he walks on.  Everything the heart can desire, even to being mother to some of the very saddest persons ever seen on a screen.  It shows what genius will do for a woman when she finds out what kind of genius she’s got and is further goaded by the necessity of supporting a husband in the style to which he has been accustomed by a doting father.  She’s some person now, let me tell you.

“She spent a week with me in Red Gap last fall, and you’d ought to seen how certain parties kowtowed to me so they’d get to meet her.  I found that about every woman under fifty in our town is sure she was born for this here picture work, from Henrietta Templeton Price to Beryl Mae Macomber, who’s expecting any day to be snapped up by some shrewd manager that her type is bound to appeal to, she being a fair young thing with big eyes and lots of teeth, like all film actresses.  Metta Bigler, that teaches oil painting and burnt wood, give Vida a reception in her Bohemian studio in Red Gap’s Latin Quarter—­the studio having a chain of Chianti bottles on the wall and an ash tray with five burnt cigarette ends on a taboret to make it look Bohemian—­and that was sure the biggest thrill our town has had since the Gus Levy All Star Shamrock Vaudeville Company stranded there five years ago.  It just shows how important my little actress friend is—­and look what she come up from!”

I said I wouldn’t mind looking what she come up from if she had started low enough to make it exciting.

Ma Pettengill said she had that!  She had come up from the gutter.  She said that Vida Sommers, the idol of thousands, had been “a mere daughter of the people.”  Her eyes crinkled as she uttered this phrase.  So I chose a chair in the shadow while she built a second cigarette.

Ten years ago I’m taking a vacation down in New York City.  Along comes a letter from Aunt Esther Colborn, of Fredonia, who is a kind of a third cousin of mine about twice removed.  Says her niece, Vida, has had a good city job as cashier of a dairy lunch in Boston, which is across the river from some college, but has thrown this job to the winds to marry the only college son of a rich New York magnate or Wall Street crook who has cast the boy off for contracting this low alliance with a daughter of the people.  Aunt Esther is now afraid Vida isn’t right happy and wants I should look her up and find out.  It didn’t sound too good, but I obliged.