They talked frankly, in their three cheap rooms at the “Pittsville White House,” before Wallace’s girl.  Jesse was pompous; Lloyd boyishly fretful; Mabel, patient, sympathetic, discouraged, and sanguine by turns.  Martie was enraptured by the babies:  Bernadette, a crimped heavy little brunette of five, and Leroy delicious at three months in limp little flannel wrappers.

“I’ll tell you what, Miss Monroe—­I’m going to call you Martha—­” said Mabel, “I’m just about sick of California.  I’m not a Californian; little old New York for mine.  I first seen the light of day at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, and I wish to the good Lord I was there now.  You’ll never get a fair deal in Frisker, if any one should ride up on a bike and ask you, dear.  We were doing very good last fall when little Mister Man here decided to join the party—­after that I was simply no good!  The box receipts have fell off steadily since we put that awful girl in.  Don’t leave that heavy child paralyze your limbs—­she’ll set there forever like an immidge, if you go on telling her stories!”

“I am amused—­genuinely amused at the circumstances under which you find us, Miss Monroe,” said Jesse Cluett with a dignified laugh.  “And my friends in the East would be equally surprised.  Professional pride brought me West, the pride of a man whose public demands one or two favoured parts from him, year after year.  My three or four successes were a great gratification to me; not only the public, but my fellow actors at the Lambs, assured me that my future was made.  ‘Made?—­no,’ I said.  ‘No.  I have no wish to become a one-part man.’  To John Drew I said—­I met him going into the Club-’H’ar you, Jesse?’ he said. ...  Oh, yes; we are warm friends, old friends.  I played for two years with John Drew.  Very brilliant actor—­in some ways.  And that is only one instance of the enthusiastic appreciation to which I am accustomed. ...  Are we going to eat, my dear?” For Mrs. Cluett, who in her hospitable enthusiasm over Martie had taken a little spirit lamp from the washstand and placed a full kettle over the flame, was now looking about her in a vague, distressed sort of way.

“It’s going out,” said she blankly.  Philosophically, Jesse put his wide-brimmed hat over his loose curls and, straightening his shoulders, walked mincingly out for alcohol with the younger men.  Mrs. Cluett spread a small, spotted fringed cloth on a trunk, setting on it a cut and odorous lemon a trifle past its prime and a sticky jar of jam.  Martie continued to cuddle Leroy and tell Bernadette a fairy tale.  She found the crowded, tawdry bedroom delightfully cosy, especially when the men came back with graham crackers and cheese and spongy, greasy bakery doughnuts.

They all laughed when Wallace asked for the rat-trap’s delight; and when Lloyd dropped a cruller on the floor and thumped his heel to show its weight; and when Wallace said:  “Don’t jam or jar Miss Monroe, Jesse!” But when, in retort for this latest witticism, Martie said:  “Put your hand where it hurts, Wallace, and show Mama”; the laughter changed to actual shrieks of mirth; Jesse indulging in a deep “ha-ha-ha!” and Mabel hammering her heels madly together and sobbing put faintly that she should die—­she should simply die!