great big theater full of a peevish vaudeville audience, just
rise at you, give one roar of laughter they hadn't expected at
all to give, and then settle down to giggle at every move you
made?

Girl alive, I just had 'em! They couldn't take their eyes off me.
If I squirmed, they howled. If I stood on one foot, scratching
the torn leg of my stocking with the other--you know, Mag!--they
yelled. If I grinned, they just roared.

Oh, Mag, can't you see? Don't you understand? I was It. The
center of the stage I carried round with me--it was just Nancy
Olden. And for ten minutes Nancy had nothing to do but to play
with 'em. 'Pon my life, Mag, it's just like stealing; the old
graft exactly; it's so fascinating, so busy, and risky, except
that they play the game with you and pay you and love you to fool
'em.

When the curtain fell it was different. Grays followed by the
Charities, all clean and spick-and-span and--not in it; not even
on the edge of it--stormed up to Obermuller standing at the
wings.

"I'll quit the show here and now," she squawked. "It's a
shame, a beastly shame. How dare you play me such a trick, Fred
Obermuller? I never was treated so in my life--to have that dirty
little wretch come tumbling on like that, without even so much as
your telling me you'd made up all this new business for her! It's
indecent, anyway. Why, I lost my cue. There was a gap for a full
minute. The whole act was such a ghastly failure that I--"